Music in the Dark
by PinponGaNannai
Summary: SPOILER ALERT. Four months had passed and the Scouting Legion could finally retake Wall Maria, but in order to succeed, they had to pay a high prize: Levi's eyes. Due to this, will Eren be able to reach Levi and take him out of his depression? (Ereri/RivaEre)
1. Chapter 1

_Ok, before anyone starts to read, I have a couple of things to say._

_First of all, for those **who don't follow the manga**, **please do not read this fanfiction**, since it's has **spoiler**. And for those who follow it, I'm really sorry for taking Reiner, Bertholdt, Ymir, Christa and Pastor Nick already out of the story, but since I decided to write this in a time to which the manga hasn't reached yet, I left them out because nobody knows what is really going to happen, and since the manga is still ongoing, I took off those characters who are currently into the main plot. Sorry, but in order to create a plot 'of my own', so to speak, I really needed to._

_Another thing I wanted to say is that I'm not a native speaker of English but an 'English as a second language' student, so if you catch some grammar mistakes or weird vocabulary usage during your reading, I apologize for that and please ask you for letting me know about it to correct it. However, in order to improve vocabulary and the amount of different words I'll be using, I thought of a game. Yes, a game. It'd be easy, a piece of cake, actually._

_I thought that after you read, you may want to leave a review, right? So, every time you do so, I ask you to leave a word for me. Any word that you'd like me to incorporate into the text, especially if it's an adjective or a verb that you think fits to a character's personality or to a situation you'd like to read. So, after your reviews, I'll study the semantic meaning of every word and analyze how and when to use it._

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**FIRST PART**  
_Darkness_

Chapter 1  
_Blind_

Four months had passed since they could finally kill Reiner and Bertholdt, though they still couldn't get Annie off of her crystal shield or whatever that it was, an issue that was driving Hanji crazy. They also didn't know where Ymir and Christa were. Even Pastor Nick had disappeared. Hence, many soldiers from the Scouting Legion were starting to freak out.

They were scared, driven by doubt and insecurity feelings. What would happen now? It was during those times of people's insecurity when Erwin proved to be a good leader, encouraging people to continue working hard, especially to those soldiers from the 104th trainee squad who were eager to fight under the hope of recovering Wall Maria with Eren's help. And as they were close to fulfilling that dream, they were even more enthusiastic and stronger than usual.

Erwin had managed to bring success to the Scouting Legion with little victories. First, he planned to establish a new route from each district of Wall Rose to their respective near districts in Wall Maria. The goal was to divide the Scouting Legion into three teams and get them to Wall Maria as quickly as possible at the same time in one extramural expedition and so they did it.

Then the idea was to establish themselves in the three abandoned cities of Wall Maria that still had their doors closed, so they weren't invaded by titans. They could perfectly do that. For the next step, they just had to gather as much supplies as they could get from the three cities and work hard to get them into the wall and transport them towards Shiganshina. That took them about two more weeks.

As for what was next, they had started to carry out the next step, which was filling the hole in the wall, for which Eren was crucial. He had to quickly gather as much supplies as he could in his titan form and build -during the afternoon- the first provisional wall that would stop the titans from coming into the whereabouts of Wall Maria, while the soldiers would protect him and his task from any danger. Then, during the night, everybody would clean the cannons while Eren would rest.

On the second day of building, everyone had to protect Eren's titan form again from the titans that were inside between Rose and Maria while he would build a second provisional wall. Just to be sure that the titans wouldn't break the first one so easily.

Until then, Corporal Levi was doing an outstanding work killing titans, but as he was still human, he couldn't control the whole situation by himself and, in the blink of an eye, an eccentric titan broke the defense line and bit Eren's right leg. The titan was not more than a 6 meters one, but still, that was a mistake Levi couldn't stand, so he killed it right away. He almost went out of gas doing so.

"Eren, are you alright?" Levi screamed to him, since he was now on the floor. And as soon as Eren nodded, he talked to him again. "Lift me up. I'm almost out of gas now." Eren put his hand beside him, Levi climbed and Eren threw him up to the wall. Levi flew up almost forty meters and used the gas left to climb to the top. Then he quickly changed his gas supply and went back to work.

Since Petra and the other members of Levi's unit died, they both had to learn how to work as a team since they were the team left. Erwin had suggested Levi to take Mikasa and Armin into the squad too, so then Eren would be even more protected. Levi didn't seem happy with that suggestion, but instead of having refusing it instantly, he took a moment to think about it.

He would definitely not take Armin into his squad. That was something he considered completely pointless and stupid, not only because he was weak, but also because he would fit better in any other squad where he had to think instead to kill. On the other hand, Mikasa was worth recruiting.

After several days considering it, he talked to Eren about it as he usually would regarding squad matters, and two days later he received a negative answer. Eren had mentioned it to her and she had completely refused the idea. "I won't join that asshole's squad even if I was paid for", she had proudly said. After that, the team remained of only two.

Some days later, Eren had spoken to him again about it. "Mikasa asked to me today if she could still join our squad... I guess she got really scared with the last expedition." Of course she got scared. Eren had reached his titan form's limit far away from getting to Rose and was dangerously surrounded by titans. If it weren't for Levi that saved him, he would have been eaten.

Levi didn't take that very good, so his answer was rude, very rude. "Since when does she believe I'm that good person? Fuck her. I won't accept scared and proud cry-babies into my team. " The team remained of two until that day.

Levi had gone for another gas supply when more titans approached to Eren and heard Mikasa screaming. For a moment or two, he felt really worried and tired, but quickly grabbed new blades to return to battle. Then he realized that Eren had finished building the provisional wall, just in time before some titans jumped in to bite him, and the reason Mikasa was screaming was because Eren was surrounded –just as so many times before– by titans while she was trying to kill them.

Instead of helping with the killing, Levi went just straight to Eren's titan form's neck and cut it to take him out. He pulled of one of Eren's arms and, once out, he carried him on his shoulder, half unconscious. He was in his way to climb the wall when a titan jumped at them. He could see their death coming, but Hanji and Mikasa slaughtered the titan's head before he could do some chewing with them.

They got completely covered in blood with that, which made him sick for a second or two, until he started to feel some strange pain. His eyes were hurting badly. When they made it to the top of the wall and Armin received Eren, he walked away looking for some water. Nobody approached him. In fact, Eren got all the attention. Some were worried about him, as usual, and some others were celebrating and thank him for the success of the mission.

Armin walked towards him some minutes after Eren had awakened. "Corporal Levi, are you alright? That last moment seemed very horrifying from here." He talked softly, but Levi was on the floor beside some boxes and bags, too keen on finding a canteen full of water. "Sir?" He talked again. "Sir? Seriously, are you alright?" Armin got close to him and looked at his face covered in titan's blood.

Levi finally found what he was looking for, looked up and spilled the water all over his face, while Armin's expression went from worried to horrified. Levi's eyes were burning. "Corporal, what's wrong?" He didn't answer. He spilled more water into his eyes, but it only ended into a groan of pain and some steam, like when the titan's blood is evaporating.

"Corporal?" Armin called again, noticing now that Levi's eyes were bleeding. He then reacted instinctively and went over the others. "Help! Corporal Levi needs a medic!" He screamed frightened for what he'd seen. Meanwhile, Levi was utterly immobile. He wouldn't move even an eyelash. He was paralyzed because of pain, that pain in his eyes that was killing him, burning his eyes.

Everyone approached to them and saw Levi in that position: kneeling on the floor and looking up while his eyes were bleeding.

"Levi, what's wrong?" Hanji asked, terrified as same as the others.

"It… hurts." He hardly managed to answer back. Then he closed his eyes, but the blood was still falling through his cheek as if they were tears and they were still hurting. Erwin then knew that they needed more than a doctor.

They had trouble with getting the way back to Rose. They still had to clean the area between Maria and Rose from titans, but they just couldn't without Levi. Everyone knew that. That was the reason they had trouble getting back, because they couldn't fight. That way back took 20% of the men left, as if it weren't enough with the ones who died during the way to Maria and the two days of building.

Erwin didn't wait to get to Trost to find Levi a doctor. In fact, as soon as they got to Karanese, he dismissed the troops and went straight to the hospital together with Levi, Hanji and the most worried of all, Eren. There were a couple of soldiers from the Garrisons waiting to be treated, but Erwin just manages to get Levi treated as soon as they arrived.

They were all frightened, fearing that they would lose the mankind's strongest soldier. Levi had already lost a lot of blood and started to feel weak, which was something to worry about, especially when he himself had admitted it. Hanji quickly explained the doctor what happened and that what was burning Levi's eyes was titan's blood. Then, the man took a look again to Levi's eyes and, judging by his glance, what he was about to say was no good at all. But before talking, he asked them to leave the room and talk in the hallway.

"Well, the damage is too severe. His corneas were completely burned and, judging for his upcoming fever, they already got infected. It also seems impossible to recover them. Even stopping the bleeding appears to be impossible. " He explained slowly as he was sorry for what had happened and for what he should do in order to save him, so to speak.

"What does that mean?" Hanji whispered scared as hell. "He won't be able to see again?!" Hanji abruptly asked, almost freaking herself out. She knew very well that losing Levi from the Scouting Legion would be a terrible loss to humanity.

"Not just that. We'll have to remove his eyeballs." The doctor replied and looked at Erwin, knowing that he was the one to give permission to that and continued explaining. "Waiting for it to heal would be twice as dangerous than surgically removing his eyes because of the infection they got, which, since was caused by titan's blood, we don't know if we could control. We don't know what kind of medicine to use either."

"But… Hasn't he lost enough blood already?" Eren shyly interrupted. "He wouldn't stand a surgery, would he?"

The doctor sighed and shrugged. "Yes, he has, and no, he wouldn't. That's another of our problems. The more we talk, the more he's near to death because of the infection and the continuous bleeding, which isn't even from the eyes themselves but from the sclera."

"The what?" Eren suddenly asked. He seemed not to understand.

"The sclera, the outer layer of the eye. It's the irrigated area of it. That's why it's bleeding so hard." He explained again, starting to lose his patience. Then, the three of them stared at Erwin's face.

"If we let him keep his eyes, he'll have a painful and long death. But if we try to remove his eyes, we'll take the risk of him to die, but the hope for him to live?" Erwin slowly asked, still thinking. Like if it were a hard decision for him to make, more than it already was.

"Exactly." The doctor replied. "Then go ahead. Do it. Save him." Erwin added quickly, without hesitating.

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_Well, I hope you liked this. If there's anything you'd like to suggest, feel free to leave a review. Don't forget to bring me words!_


	2. Chapter 2

_Thanks to the people who left a review, I really appreciate it! _

_Here's another chapter. I hope you like it and leave a comment. Don't forget our words game ~ ! Give me words for the next chapter!_

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Chapter 2  
_Pain_

"If we let him keep his eyes, he'll have a painful and long death. But if we try to remove his eyes, we'll take the risk of him to die, but the hope for him to live?" Erwin slowly asked, still thinking, like if it were a hard decision for him to make, more than it already was.

"Exactly." The doctor replied. "Then go ahead. Do it. Save him." Erwin added quickly, without hesitating.

"But…" He replied, looking down and putting his hands into his white coat's pockets. "There's still one more issue to solve." He added, now looking back to them again.

"What? What is it now?" Hanji asked without really wanting to know the answer. She started to cry while covering her mouth with her right hand.

"We might need someone to donate him some blood, which is another risk." He sighed. "You see… This isn't a good hospital as we would like it to be. We don't have the technology that there's in the capital to know if someone's blood is compatible with the patient, so if we try to do the surgery and he needs a blood transfusion… Well, we'll have to take the risk." Hanji was about to pass out.

"What would happen if the blood used for the transfusion isn't compatible with Levi's?" Eren asked and, for some seconds, Erwin and Hanji looked at him as if he were stupid for not knowing that detail.

"He would die as quickly as a titan without its neck." Hanji answered.

"One to two days. It could take even three or four." The doctor corrected.

"And do you know what blood type Levi is?" Eren asked again. They all looked their faces without knowing and shrugged. Eren waited for someone answer, but as nobody did, he got angry. "How is it possible that nobody knows?! Erwin, how much years have you both been working together and you don't know such a detail like that?! It can't be that he hadn't been injured before!" Eren yelled at Erwin, without noticing that he was doing that to a superior, and when he did, he shut up for a while and swallowed hard. "Even I know my blood type…" He whispered.

Next was silence, a very uncomfortable silence and they remained like that until Erwin broke the ice. "Well, if we don't risk it, he would die anyway." He whispered, letting the others understand that he was willing to give the permission for the surgery, even knowing that there was more to lose than to win. The doctor asked Erwin to follow him and so they all did.

"Eren, how do you know it? Your blood type…" Hanji asked, completely curious about it while they were walking.

"I know this because Corporal Levi gave permission to some people from the Military Police to take some of my blood for their studying purposes, since they couldn't dissect me." He explained. "Some time later the Corporal told me that they hadn't find anything more than my blood type, which is zero negative or O negative. I'm not quite sure how to say it".

Everybody stopped and looked at him. Erwin almost went furious because of Eren's medical ignorance and the next thing he knew about was that the doctors were going to take more blood from him and give it to Levi, just because his blood type was kind of 'universal'. The surgery started right away, taking advantage of Levi's unconsciousness so they could avoid using anesthesia, which was a risk too, because of his weakness. The three of them were waiting in the hallway, sitting in some old chairs while some candles were on for them.

Erwin looked serious at the same time than worried; Hanji was scared as hell, it wasn't necessary to be near her to notice how worried she was and Eren was more than worried, more than scared. Because, being all honest, if Levi wasn't around anymore to watch over him, maybe de Military Police would end up dissecting him.

They could suddenly hear some screaming from the surgery room; it was Levi. A nurse came out running and approached to them. "We may need your help for a while." She kindly said to Erwin and went back in. He looked at the other two and then stood up to follow her. Hanji stood up and walked towards the exit. "I can't stand this." She said before leaving. Eren stayed there, alone, sad, worried.

When Erwin entered the room, he instantly suffered as he saw three nurses holding Levi and trying to make him stay still while other one was trying to administer him some anesthetic gas. "We need you to hold him up so we can continue working!" The doctor said, exasperated, so Erwin reacted fast to it and did what was needed. He was holding Levi's shoulders and pushing them against the bed. He then looked to that scene that, even with the years he had known Levi, he had never seen: he was crying and screaming.

Once he had hold down Levi and decreased his movements in reaction to the pain, the nurse could finally anesthetize him and started providing him with oxygen. Little by little, Levi fell asleep and the doctor continued with his task. Erwin then saw his quick method of cutting and cauterizing, which was avoiding any bleeding, but as he suffered to see that, he silently left the room.

Erwin went back to sit next to Eren. The boy looked at his superior, surprised. "Sir, you have blood on your…" He didn't' continue. He swallowed hard instead. "Is he… Is he going to be okay?"

"I hope so." Erwin didn't look at him. "I really hope so." He took a pause. "He's a strong man."

The surgery went good, better than expected. After that moment in which Levi had woken up, the doctor had tried to do his best and went even faster than before, very skillfully. "I removed his eyes and the nerves around them, so he won't feel any pain or anything. It won't bleed either as much as the area remains bandaged to avoid possible contamination of the area." Those were some of the doctor's words and instructions. It was a long lecture that only Erwin completely listened.

They all stayed with Levi in the hospital the whole night, sleeping whenever they had fallen asleep. By the morning, the doctor announced that Levi should stay at least a week there, so they just decided to go back to the other members of the Scouting Legion and have some rest. The three of them needed it.

When they got to the building in which they were staying, everyone's looked at them while whispering. Some were worried and some not, and as they walked by, they heard a sentence that made them turn to see who the hell had said it and surprisingly, it was Mikasa.

"Serves him right." She had said; hatred. Eren put a hand on her shoulder and made her turn. "What did you just said?" He asked.

Mikasa looked at him very surprised, but then angry. "I said 'serves him right'"

"How can you be so cruel!? A man loses his eye sight and you can say that just because you dislike him!?" He yelled out of control. Too many emotions arousing. Armin called Eren's name, but he was totally ignored.

"Cruel? Do you think I am cruel after how cruel he has been to you? Eren! Are you really that idiot?" She replied standing up and looking at Eren with a furious glance.

Eren grunted. "That man has saved my life more than you have! There's no way you can find him cruel after that!"

"He may have been a good soldier but that doesn't make him good, you know?! He's an asshole and now he's got what he deserves!" Mikasa couldn't stand that Eren was actually defending him, and was about to say something when Erwin intervened.

"Ackerman." He said. "You'll be twice punished for speaking like that about a former superior of yours and for now raising your voice to your new superior." Everyone got blank. What had he just said?

"W-what?" She asked, surprised as same as Eren was.

"You heard me." Erwin gave a cold glance to her. "Eren will take Levi's place in the Scouting Legion and you have just disrespected a superior. As a punishment, you'll return to Trost without a horse or your gear. So if I were you, I'd start running right away." Then, he continued his steps along with Hanji. Mikasa grunted and left the building without saying any other word, and Eren sat at Armin's side.

Then the questions started. How was he? What happened at the hospital? What did the doctor do? Was he going to be alright? Will he really take his place? Had he really lost his eye sight? All the questions stopped when Eren opened his mouth to talk. "He's not only blind. His eyes were removed at all." Then he started to tell everything. What the doctor has said, the blood they took from him and gave Levi, the screaming during the surgery, the blood on Erwin's clothes and the eyeless, bandaged and swollen face of an unconscious Corporal Levi.

He felt sad, really sad, and also realized that he wasn't the only one. "I wish I had been in his place." Connie said and everyone stared at him. "So humanity wouldn't be losing his strongest soldier."

They all agreed.

The week had passed slowly and Levi hadn't awakened yet; he was still kind of weak. The doctor had said that it was normal, especially because of the blood he had lost and the stress his body had gone through. But awaken or not, they had to return to Trost. They put him on a cart and Eren accompanied him the whole trip.

Back in the Legion's headquarters, Erwin ordered to leave Levi in his room and leave a guard on his door during all day, so if he awakens, he would be attended. Then, Eren was called to Erwin's office.

"Did you require my presence, sir?" Eren said softly, not feeling quite well.

"Yes, as I said before, you're going to take Levi's place in the Scouting Legion. So you need to know what is going to be your work." Erwin explained slowly and with a little tone of being tired.

"But… Sir, are you serious? I thought that what you said to Mikasa was to just shut her mouth."

"At some point, yes, it was for that, but most importantly, it was true, and it's sad, but Levi won't be able to realize his duties anymore. You'll have to take his place." Erwin sighed after finishing and leaned back in his chair. "It won't be easy for anyone, but is the best way to try to solve things that I can think of."

"To solve things? What things, sir?" Eren was now sort of confused. Erwin sighed again.

"Sit down, Eren. I don't want you to stay standing there." Eren sat down in the chair in front of Erwin's desk. "You know that the condition under you stayed with us was that Levi would watch over you." Erwin said, but it sounded like he was only starting to explain something. "So now that Levi can't do that, the Military Police will try to realize another trial for your tutoring."

Eren got instantly scared. "But… You have a plan, do you?" He asked, shivering.

"Of course I have. You'll take Levi's place in the Scouting Legion. Therefore, you'll automatically become an important superior of the Legion." He sighed again and seemed worried. "But that won't be reason enough for them to stop making the effort of gaining you. So, the best we can do is to have the hope that Zacklay reconsiders the fact that it was because of you that we recovered the Wall Maria."

"That means that the trial is imminent." Eren pointed out and Erwin solemnly nodded. "What are we going to propose now in the trial? I mean, the first goal was already approached. What's the next one?"

"Shiganshina, of course. We must get to your house." Erwin answered as soon as Eren finished talking. "But this time you'll have to argument on your own, and you'll have to be smart and think strategically. But most importantly, you'll have to have manners." That last observation was very accurate for him to say it.

"Uhm… Yes, sir." Eren sighed and looked up, stressed. "What will my work be? I mean. Until now, I've always seen Levi reading reports, killing titans and being focus on me. But more than that, I have no idea."

"You just said it, Eren. You'll have to read and write reports, kill titans and watch over yourself." Erwin looked serene and solemn now. "I think you'll do it well, you've learned a lot in these last months."

The conversation lasted until there. After that, Eren went back to his room and found Armin waiting in there. He seemed worried, about the Corporal, but about Eren.

"Armin, what are you doing here? You should be asleep." He just noticed it was almost midnight and that he was tired as hell.

"I came to talk to you." He said kindly. "You don't look well and I think that… maybe you want to talk." He was sitting in the bed, with his feet on the bed and hugging his legs.

"Talk about what?" Eren walked towards him and sat beside him. "I only know I just want to sleep."

"I know you're tired, Eren, you look awfully tired. But not only tired, you're stressed. Something's worrying you, I know it, and you need to talk about it." Armin replied. He was right; he knew what he was saying.

Eren looked at him some minutes while thinking in what to say. "Well, yeah, I'm worried and stressed. Also scared. I don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know if Levi will be ok." He whispered, looking down.

"You're worried about him." Armin pointed out. There was no way he could not get to that; he was too smart.

Armin then put a hand on Eren's shoulder, looking at him as he was waiting for him to talk. Eren was skeptical. He didn't know what to say and how, but he felt that he just had to, otherwise, he wouldn't get to feel better an Armin would feel as if he had rejected his help.

"I... I am in fact worried about him. I also feel guilty. I feel it's my fault that this happened to him." Eren expressed. "And I feel that maybe because of this, I could lose him as a friend."

"So you two are friends." Armin observed. "Why didn't you tell us that?"

"Because I didn't realize it until now." He took a paused and sighed. "I mean, it's not that we used to treat each other as friends, it was never different than Corporal and soldier, but there was communication, more than I could imagine we would have."

"What do you mean by that?" Those last words provoked a big curiosity in Armin and left Eren sort of speechless. "If you can't explain it, give examples."

"Well... We used to train and prepare strategies a lot. It was fun. We talked and draw maps and strategies as we drank coffee or tea. We even had some casual chatter now and then and joked about stupid things. He had a very dark humor, you know." He smiled with a chuckle. "I feel that I know him and he knows me as well, and I'm afraid that that could be lost from now on. I don't know how he will behave from now on. I'm afraid he changes."

"But, he shouldn't change that much. He may react badly to his blindness, but in the end he'll still being Levi, don't you think?" Armin's voice was soft, comforting. "Besides, how much can he change?"

"I hope so. I really hope so." Everyone hoped so.

Those moments with Armin gave Eren a smile. It felt good from him to take care of him in that way, and not in Mikasa's mother-sister-like way. Maybe Armin was right, maybe Eren wasn't, but they just didn't know what was about to happen, and that was the question that everyone who was a relative of the now former Corporal wanted to answer: What would be Levi's reaction to his blindness? When was he going to awake? And most importantly, how would he live on? Because blindness was not something easy to overcome.


	3. Chapter 3

_Thanks to the people who's following my story, it makes me really happy! _  
_I apologize again if there's any typo or grammar mistake, remember that I'm not native and I don't see some mistakes that are obvious to a native, but I'll try to improve as the story develops. _

_Remember to give me new words! Thanks to Kluer and KatrinaDeValois for giving me words, I hope you come back soon and leave another!_

_ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ/ See you in the next chapter!_

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Chapter 3  
_Depressed_

Wherever you would go, there was a party. People had gone out to the streets to celebrate humanity's victory over Wall Maria. They were delighted with the sound of cannons as the Garrison was killing titans all day. The news had spread even faster as Wall Maria's fall. People were eager to recover the cities and started asking when the Survey Corps would recover Shiganshina. Even people in Sina was cheerful as if that had been the most sunny and bright day in history, and nobody noticed the price they had to pay, even if it was included in the newspaper.

Every town and city had been celebrating for four long days, there was no man, child or woman who wasn't celebrating, except Erwin, Hanji and Eren. At least, after everyone knew about Levi's situation, the Military Police hadn't started anything yet. They actually were quite calmed down. Which for Erwin was suspicious and for Eren, a relief. Hanji wasn't even worried about that; she was just worried about his comrade.

She had known Levi since he joined the Scouting Legion and considered him a very good friend, without caring or knowing if he considered her a friend or not. She just thought of him as a very reliable person, despite his personality; she was right, and with the years, she came to know him enough to know how sensitive he was behind his mask of nonchalance.

She went to Levi's room everyday to see if he was alright, if he had awaken or if he seemed to need something, only to find him still sleeping in the same position he had from the first day. He hadn't even moved a finger. She would have liked to change his bandages herself, but the first time she tried, she just couldn't. She couldn't look at his face. She cried. Since then, other people have been doing it.

It was the fifth day after they returned to Trost when Levi woke up. Hanji had found Eren in the way to see him; he had just left Erwin's office and was walking towards Levi's when they found each other.

"Were you having a meeting? Are there any news about expeditions or something?" Hanji asked to him while they were walking, distracting themselves from the topic they were both thinking of.

"Well, actually, yes. We'll have an expedition in two weeks. The mission is just to kill titans between Maria and Rose that may be wandering instead of walking to Wall Rose. But we haven't planned anymore yet." Eren answered and sighed. "Nor Erwin or I have been focused on that matter. We're actually worried about… You know; him."

Hanji shrugged. "Has he told you something about it? Is there a plan for Levi?"

"He just asked me to take care of him. Things have just… inverted. Now I'll be watching over him as a repay for the time he had been watching over me." He smiled and opened the door of the room. "Seems fair, doesn't it?"

Hanji didn't answer; she was looking at the bed. Levi wasn't in the same position of the day before and the day before that. He was lying on his left side, facing the wall and with the bed sheets up to his waist. He was shirtless and the shirt was on the floor. He was also snoring. They both walked silently into the room. Eren picked up Levi's shirt and Hanji took the bed sheets to cover his back and shoulders.

"Do you think that he'll respond if we try to wake him up?" Hanji asked, really wanting to do it.

"Don't know. I guess we should try." Eren put his right hand in Levi's shoulder and moved him a little bit. "Levi? Levi, wake up." He didn't answer; he just moved a little bit and continued sleeping. "Maybe we should wait for him to awake. It seems it's going to be soon." He shrugged.

They stayed all day there, talking about this and that. They didn't even left to have lunch, but in the night, they just had to go to dinner. During dinner, they told Erwin about how they had found Levi that morning and that he hadn't moved again in the whole day. Armin laughed about the fact that he as snoring. "Sorry." He said in his defense. "It's just that I'd never had imagined the Corporal snoring."

Mikasa was still angry about what happened days before and was not willing to speak to Eren about the matter, so she wasn't having dinner with them. Same as the other days.

Two hours later, Eren was getting comfortable in a chair in Levi's room, still hoping for him to awake. Hanji covered him with a blanket and smiled. "I'm off to bed. Don't stay much longer. You need to sleep too." She said before leaving. Eren just stayed there looking at his former superior. He soon fell asleep in that chair, snoring at Levi's rhythm.

It was past midnight when he slowly woke up and saw something. It was Levi; he was sitting on the bed and with his head hanging low. He had unwrapped his bandages and left them in front of him in the bed, but what shrank Eren's heart was that he had his hands in front of his face, as he was trying to see them.

"Levi?" Eren talked to him and watched how he jumped in surprise and turned his head towards him.

"E-eren?" He whispered with a strange voice. At least that seemed to Eren; strange, but the truth was that Levi was scared to death. He didn't know what was going on. It took some seconds to Eren to notice Levi's facial expression. He was scared indeed. Eren didn't know what to say to him. "Eren?" Levi asked again.

"I'm here." Eren walked towards the bed and sat on the edge of it. "How do you feel? Are you alright?" His words were kind, soft. Levi swallowed hard and raised a hand trying to find him. Eren took it and squeezed it. "I'm here." He repeated.

"Eren, what happened?" He squeezed back Eren's hand, raised his other one to find Eren's body and seized his shirt, shivering. "Why… why can't I see? What happened?"

Eren sighed. "After you got me out of my titan form, we were apparently attacked by another titan, but Hanji and Mikasa killed it by cutting its head. Because of that you got titan's blood on your eyes. That blood burned them." He explained. "It was impossible for them to heal, they had infected. So the doctor removed them."

Levi's facial expression changed again. He was horrified. He hadn't noticed that his eyes weren't there; he had just noticed he was blind, but not that detail. He swallowed hard, again, and slowly touched his face. "I'm really sorry." Eren whispered. He could feel Levi's pain with only being watching him.

There was a moment of silence. "How long have I been asleep?" Levi could barely speak now.

"I don't know. Like a week? Hanji's the one that has been counting the days. She's worried as hell, just as everyone else." Eren was trying to stay calm. He felt that Levi could lose control of himself at any moment.

"What happened meanwhile?" Levi leaned back in the bed and stayed with his arms at each side. Eren didn't know how to interpret his expressions now.

"Well… Not much. People is celebrating that we recovered Wall Maria, your situation appeared on the newspaper, Erwin decided that with your condition you should not participate into more expeditions and that you can no longer be Corporal, but he considered that you shouldn't leave the Scouting Legion." Eren was then interrupted.

"What do you mean by 'Erwin'?" Levi pointed out and Eren didn't understand. "Why didn't you mention him as your superior?" Even when emotions were about to explode on him, he was still a structured man.

"Well, you used to call him Erwin as well, and now that I took your place, I got used to say it that way too."

"You what!?" Levi suddenly sat on the bed again. Eren swallowed hard. He knew that he would react that way.

"It's only a strategy. You must be realistic, Levi. You won't be able to fight with titans again or watch over me. Because of that, the Military Police could try to make another trial to do what they please with me. Erwin just gave me your rank just to make me look 'important' and 'reliable' to the other people's eyes, so we have at least more possibilities to win the trial, in case of that happens." Eren explained quickly, being nervous.

Levi furrowed his brow, leaned back on the bed again and sighed. Eren took that moment to stand up and look for some clean bandages. "We need to blindfold you. You shouldn't be without your bandages." He said and went back to Levi's side. He didn't answer. "C'mon, sit." Nothing.

"Leave me alone." He retorted.

"I'm not leaving if you're not wearing bandages."

"Go fuck yourself and leave me alone!" He did it again.

Eren now furrowed his brow. "Levi, sit, now. It's an order. I'm your superior now, you must obey." Eren thought that with that, he may win the discussion to Levi's structured and stubborn personality.

"I don't believe you. Get out." He was Levi again.

"I already said that I'm not leaving if you're not wearing your bandages."

"Leave them. I can wear them myself." Was that pride?

"Are you not listening or what? Sit on the bed." He was determined not to lose that one.

"Get out, annoying brat!" Levi screamed.

"I won't. Sit, now." Eren ordered, which this time made Levi sick.

Levi sat on the bed willing to hit Eren in his stomach, but as Eren could actually see his movements, he avoided it and quickly circled Levi's head with the bandages. Levi tried to fight, but stopped when he felt some pain. Then Eren finished his task and tied a knot at the back of his head.

"Now have some sleep. I'll come to wake you up in the morning." Eren said and walked towards the door, looking back to Levi for a moment. He was quiet, still. Eren looked down with sadness and left the room. He then felt that there was a living hell coming up.

He couldn't sleep that night. He stayed awake until the sun came out, paying attention to any kind of sound, especially if one of them could be Levi. He was afraid he would try to get out of his room alone, or that he would fell in his room and nobody would be there for helping him.

Having slept or not, he got out of bed, took a bath and dressed earlier than usual. Everyone else was still sleeping, but he thought that waking Hanji up was a good idea… No, it wasn't. He preferred not to do it. What should he do, then? Go and tell Erwin? He went to the kitchen and prepared breakfast. Then he thought of how many days Levi had been without eating, so prepared another breakfast and went upstairs to his room.

He went in as if it was his own room, left the tray on the bedside table, opened the window, moved closer the chair to the bed, sat down and looked at Levi. He was breathing slowly, still asleep.

_"Wake up, sleeping brat." _He remembered Levi's words from some weeks before and shaked his head. "Levi, wake up." He just said. Levi just shifted a little on the bed. "Levi, you have to eat." He said again, calmly. Now Levi turned to face him, figuratively.

"What do you want?" He mumbled. "What time is it, brat?"

"It's morning, there's sunlight coming from the window. It's time for you to have breakfast."

"I don't want breakfast." He grunted.

"I'm not asking you to, I'm ordering you to have breakfast. Besides, I assure you that you want to eat before Hanji and Erwin find out you've awakened and come to see you." Eren coolly said. Levi got angry with that again.

"Shut the fuck up! You're no one to give me orders!" Levi was being rude, as usual.

"In fact, I am. Erwin ordered me to look after you. And that's what I'm doing. Now eat." He contested and put a piece of bread on his hands. Levi was about to throw it to him –expecting to hit the bulls-eye– when Erwin's voice distracted them.

"Levi, don't even dare." He said harshly. Levi stopped. "Corporal Eren, is your team ready for the expedition?"

"Yes, sir." He answered.

"Perfect. I'll meet you after lunch in my office to discuss some final details. Levi, I don't want to hear you disrespect a superior again." After that, Erwin left, leaving Levi speechless.

Eren could hear Levi swallowing and looking down. "I'll take the bread." He whispered and asked, "Can you leave me alone?" Eren was about to say something, but he preferred to stay quiet after what came next. "Please."

"I'll leave your cup of tea on the bedside. Be careful." Eren said. "It's still hot." He left it where he said he would, took the tray and left and, while doing so, he looked back to see him leaning on the bed, facing the wall and curling up. He knew he was suffering, he could see the pain on those expressions.

The first thing he did was going to Hanji's room. He told her about Levi's awakening, but not about what had happened. He did warn her about his bad mood, but he thought that giving details was not good for Levi's mood or Hanji's. Next, was going to see Armin. He really needed to talk to somebody about what happened.

"Eren!" Armin was always happy to see him. "Eren, you look sad. Did something happen?" He asked immediately, not even waiting for Eren to get to his side.

"Foretell, fortune teller." Eren said and sat beside him. They were out in the garden, leaned on the trunk of a tree. It was quite a beautiful day. Armin closed the book and looked at him.

"The sleeping beauty woke up?" He asked chuckling. "Did his prince treat him well?"

"Don't be a fool, Armin. It was horrible." He sighed and looked to the sky, took a deep breath and told everything to his friend. Armin listened to him carefully, without interrupting.

"I think that's normal." Armin commented at the end and received a glance from Eren. Normal? He had to explain that. They were talking about Levi. "It's normal. Even though he's stubborn, unapproachable and blunt, he's still a human being with feelings and dreams. Maybe his nonchalance it's just a mask or his real way to be, but after all, he's equal to us in nature. I completely understand him; he's lost everything within an hour." How could it be that Armin was always right? "You know what I think that may be more problematic to him?" Eren didn't answer. He just waited. "He's going to need a guide, somebody has to be his eyes; and that's going to hurt his pride."

"Then, what should I do? He must be very angry with me now. I'm the one that's replacing him, so to speak." Armin should have a degree on Psychology. Too bad he was a soldier.

"Become his guide, Eren. If you really were a sort of friends, you're the most appropriate person to help him, even if he doesn't want to. Why else do you think Chief Erwin would have asked you to take care of him? That's exactly what he meant."

Armin was right, as always. The rest of the day went normal. Hanji had been with Levi the whole afternoon without him wanting to, they fought countless times, always because of Levi's terrible mood.

The next days were the same. Every time someone went to Levi's room and tried to help him with anything, he would blatantly reject any help or company, and if it wasn't like that, he just stayed leaned on his bed and stayed quiet, in silence, no matter how much you talked or what you said. To sum up, he was depressed, and that was his way to express it. Everyone was tired of that. Even Erwin was.

"What are we gonna do, sir?" Eren asked, shrugging.

"I'm thinking of asking for some help." The Chief answered.

"You mean like professional help?" Erwin looked at Eren and smirked.

"Not quite professional, but better." He leaned forward in his chair, like if he was about to tell a secret. "You know... I know Levi since he was a child." He gossiped. "And he still has a mother." Erwin wasn't thinking of calling her, was him?


	4. Chapter 4

_Hi! I finally get to update this. I'm sorry it took me so long, it's just that I wrote this at least three times in three different ways to finally like it myself. _

_In this chapter I started to incorpore new original character as Alessa and Charlotte, since I'm starting to get through Levi's past. (Even though it still doesn't appear too much, I'm already working on it.) I hope you like them as the time passes by~! _

_Thanks again to the people that gave me words! Now I'd like you to choose preferentially some phrasal verbs or native expressions, since I'm trying to improve on that matter now and I may need some help. _

_Well, I hope you like this chapter and leave a comment below! _

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Chapter 4  
_Violin_

Everyone knew that Levi was depressed, suffering. Everyone was trying to be patient on him, seriously. Everyone didn't care about his behavior, even though it was very annoying and bipolar.

It took them a week until they could finally take Levi out of his room, which he didn't want to leave. For that, Hanji had helped him to take a bath (something that made Levi utterly angry and a forbidden topic to talk about) and to dress (forbidden again) while Eren was waiting outside (just because Levi was more confident on Hanji. As they walked down the stairs, Levi had retorted to Eren to leave him alone, but as he almost fell three times in a row, Eren took one of his arms and helped him. Levi just wanted to kill him, but didn't.

That situation happened all day long. Everything Levi tried to do, he horribly failed and wherever he wanted to go, he constantly fell or tripped with something. Whenever one of those situations happened, Eren was there to help him and whenever he did, Levi told him a different insult; if not, he was just silent, a very bipolar kind of reactions.

Three more days passed like this, which increased everyone's concerns. The next day they would have to go onto an expedition, something that made them think: who was going to take care of Levi meanwhile? Erwin had already a plan, but he needed support.

That night, however, Levi had a quite better humor and accepted to have some drinks with Erwin and Hanji, accompanied by Eren, who wasn't allowed to drink because he was still a minor. As Erwin and Hanji expected, Levi got drunk after no more than four glasses of whiskey while they were completely fine, but as Levi got drunk, they decided to stop drinking since they were going to an expedition in the next day.

"He doesn't resist too much alcohol, does he?" Eren asked, chuckling.

"Do I seem likely to?" Levi told him while raising one of his eyebrows. Hanji then shaked his head saying 'no'.

Suddenly, they started to have great fun. Eren would have never imagined seeing Levi in such conditions: drunk and laughing, and moreover, making jokes and laughing even of himself. That didn't last too long. Jean came to them at the table and interrupted.

"Chief Erwin, there's a man from the Military Police at the door looking for Levi." He announced. "I think he's delivering a letter, but he refuses to entrust it to another person from the Legion to deliver it to him. He claims that Levi should go to meet him."

Erwin wasn't expecting that. "Tell him to come over." That made everyone curious.

"A letter? Who would send you a letter?" Hanji questioned. "Would it be for a trial?"

The man came to the table where they were sitting in the dining hall. He looked tired and was breathing hard. "Sir, this is a letter for you written this same morning. I ask you to sign here to confirm the delivery to its sender." By finishing speaking he handed over to him a clipboard and a pencil. Levi raised one of his eyebrows, again.

"Seriously? You're a terrible human being. You should burn in hell, man." He answered. "Eren, you're my guide dog. Would you sign for me?" He had a mocking tone to say that. Eren chuckled and did what he was told to, because of force of habit. Then the man handed the letter to Levi and left almost running the room. Levi handed the letter to Erwin.

"Who is it from?" He asked and leaned back on his chair. "Read it for yourself."

Erwin looked at it and smiled. "It's from Alessa. Why is it that she sends letters to you and not to me?" He commented and opened it. A noise was then heard; it was a violin case was thrown upon the table by the delivery man –though nobody knew what it really was-. Everyone, except Levi, stared at him as he left again.

"Who is Alessa?" Hanji asked, curious.

"Did you read it?" Levi didn't pay attention to her, for obvious reasons.

"I'm on it." Erwin took a moment to read it and laughed, just laughed. "Shall I read it outloud?"

"Is there anything about her work? Or something more private? If not, you might." He answered and crossed his arms, waiting.

Erwin proceeded:

_"To whoever reads this letter for Levi; please don't lose any word while reading out loud._

_ Dear Levi,_

_ I just read on the newspaper that you got blind after reclaiming Wall Maria… I still can't believe it. I also heard that Charlotte was going to travel to Trost to see you. GOOD LUCK. Because of this I decided to send you this letter through the Military Police's mail system, just to make sure this message arrives to you before Charlotte._

_ I send you also a package. It's your violin, the one you gave to me before leaving home. I took the liberty to change its strings and polished it. I hope it arrives in good conditions to you. It may save your ass a couple times if Charlotte is visiting you._

_ I'll try to take some vacations in order to go and see you, but until then, just take care of yourself, alright? And don't be an asshole with the people around you, 'cause if they're still there and haven't told you to go to hell it's because they DO care. Don't screw it. By the way, if I can't make it to visit you, I guess you can come here, since I bet you'll have a lot of spare time from now on. _

_ Sincerely yours,  
Alessa S._

_ PS. Say hi to Erwin for me, ok?"_

After reading, Erwin returned the letter to Levi and looked at how Eren was curiously looking at the violin case. There was a long silence before someone started to speak.

"Why would Charlotte be coming here?" Levi broke the silence, changing his street-background accent to his normal nonchalant tone.

"I wrote to her. She should arrive tonight, at any moment, actually." He replied to him, to which Levi stood up violently intending to leave. He was more than utterly angry.

"Why would you do that?! You're an idiot!" He yelled furiously before tripping with a chair and almost falling. Eren stood up quickly and went to his aid. Levi gritted his teeth. "Leave me alone!" Eren stepped back in fear as Levi left the dining room on his own. Erwin then called Eren back to the table.

Levi walked half of the hallway without even knowing where was he going and it wasn't five minutes before he got lost. He leaned on a wall and slid down to the floor with a sigh. Some minutes after he felt other people's steps.

"Who's there?" He asked, startled.

"It's Armin and Mikasa." He recognized Armin's voice. "Why are you down there, Levi?" He asked kindly as he approached.

Levi took some seconds to fight his pride and answer Armin's question. "I'm kind of… lost." He whispered, ashamed.

"Didn't Eren take you to your room?" That was Mikasa's jealousy speaking.

"No." He replied, remembering what he did on the top of his anger. "I left alone." He whispered. "Arlert, can you take me to my room?"

"Sure." For a moment, Levi got surprised as Armin almost replied instantly. He hadn't taken a moment to think or to consider it, he just accepted, and he admitted that was nice. He stood up and let Armin take his arm, since as he didn't know him too much; he wouldn't scold him as he would with Eren.

They were walking through the corridors when Mikasa complained, "Is that the smell of alcohol? It's gross."

"Yeah, grown people drink sometimes, especially when life is full of shit." Levi couldn't avoid saying that. He was still drunk, after all.

"Maybe it's not life, but you, who is full of shit." She blatantly said, Levi frowned and Armin looked at her and called her name in a way of reprimanding her.

"Hey, Mikasa, why is that you hate me so much?" Levi sincerely asked.

"I just don't like how asshole you are." She replied without hesitation. Levi just laughed at that.

"No, girl, you don't know me." He couldn't stop chuckling. "You hate me since I kicked Eren's ass, don't you? And you haven't stopped hating me because you realize that I've done more for Eren than you have. Am I right? You just wanted to be at his side and protect him as the little brother he is for you, but you couldn't and you were jealous and so you hated me, didn't you?" He was rude, more than expected. Armin swallowed; he was nervous.

Mikasa looked at him, she was indignant. "You don't know me either! You act like you have done something good for him, but you haven't! You just treat him like a dog!"

"Oh, so now I haven't done anything good for him? I'm sorry. The next time he's aimed at with a gun I'll just do nothing, so he can die in piece and with his full set of teeth." He replied with sarcasm and stopped, confronting her. "And I'm also sorry to tell you that I know you enough to tell that you're just a spoiled girl that rejected my invitation to join my squad because of pride and then went back asking for joining because you were scared as hell."

Mikasa was shocked and, for some moments, she thought she was getting in real trouble for discussing with him like that, but then remembered that he was no longer a superior. In fact, he wasn't even a soldier anymore. "You're wrong. You're dead wrong." She whispered, just without knowing how to respond his words.

"No, I'm not. You're attitude has just admitted I'm right." He replied, now even more serious. "Now listen to me, girl." He sounded threatening. "I've been protecting Eren's ass for a while now, but we all know that I won't be able to do it anymore." He started, getting closer to her. "And now I know that you're in his team and you're responsible for that duty." He put his finger in the upper part of her chest in a very threatening way. "So I want to tell you something, brat: If you happen to fail on your duty, I'll make sure you lose more than your eyes. Got it?"

Mikasa got really scared with that. "Don't act now like if you care about him."

"I've always cared, bitch, and I'm serious. If Eren doesn't come back tomorrow, I'll kick your ass to death. I won't tolerate that my friends' death and my eyes go to waste." He finished and pushed her back, looking then for Armin around him. Mikasa was breathing hard, scared and nervous too. She had never felt such a fear as that from other human being, and so she realized that she was in fact wrong, all the time. She left without saying any other word.

Both the boys walked in silence what was left to get to Levi's room and, once in front of the door, Armin talked. "I think you're right."

"Uh? About what?" Levi walked into his room followed by Armin and looking for his bed, to which Armin led him.

"About what you said to Mikasa. You're right. She was mistaken by hating you with such childish reasons." Levi just sighed after Armin's words.

"You know… I just don't care if she hates me or not." He shrugged. "I only want her to stop acting childish, because I really don't trust someone that childish to watch over Eren." He sat on the bed and took off his boots.

"I understand; you're worried." Armin watched him. "Do you need help with something?"

"No, I'm fine." Levi rejected automatically, without thinking. But then he took some minutes to think about Armin, and decided to say something that he wouldn't say while being sober. "Can I tell you something, Arlert?"

Armin, instead of replying with words, walked towards Levi and sat beside him on the bed, and then replied. "What's bothering you?"

"How did you know that something's bothering me?" He went on the defensive.

"Because otherwise you would have put it in other words." He smiled; too bad Levi couldn't see that. "Also, your face expresses everything lately."

"You're too damn cute, Arlert." Levi complained. "Well, it's just that, I've noticed something these days." He started talking. "It's that I haven't only lost my eyes, but also the capacity of crying. I really want to cry, you know, but I just can't." His voice was slow, soft; human.

Armin stared at him for a long period of time. "I admire you." He whispered. "I really do, especially now with what you've said. I think that even though all of this happened, you're still the strongest; maybe not because of abilities to fight, but to overcome life."

Levi smiled sadly. "I miss the times when I could cry, really, 'cause now I don't know what to do instead."

All Armin could do was to think about that a little bit. "Maybe... Maybe all of this happened because destiny doesn't want you to cry anymore. Maybe now's the time when you must find happiness. Maybe instead of keep trying on crying, you should start searching for happiness."

There was a moment of silence after that, until Levi chuckled. "You do are a very poetical piece of shit. Now get out and leave me alone, sweet brat." Armin laughed and hugged him all of a sudden. Levi hugged back for some seconds and then shoved him away. "Get out, now, and leave my pride and my reputation inside the room."

Armin laughed again and knew that that was Levi's way to clarify that he shouldn't talk about all that, and he agreed.

Back in the dining room, there was quite a different situation. After Levi left, Hanji and Eren remained in silence, not daring to ask anything about what had been spoken about, but somebody had to.

"Well… Who is Alessa?" Hanji asked for the second time, now with a softer voice.

Erwin didn't answer; he only drank a bit of more whiskey. Eren spoke instead. "I think I get it…" He said. "I'm not quite sure, but it sounds to me that Charlotte may be Levi's mother and judging by his reaction and what's on the letter… She may not be too much friendly."

"What makes you think it's his mother?" Hanji's voice sounded confused.

Eren was about to explain what Erwin had said to him days before, but Erwin talked first. "You're right, Charlotte is his mother. I'll ask her to stay here and teach Levi to overcome his blindness until we're back, and if we're lucky, she may accept."

"If we're lucky? What do you mean by that?" Hanji was still confused, and now so was Eren.

"That implies that she may reject…" Eren whispered.

They could hear Sasha's voice from far away. "Uhm… Miss, you're not allowed to come in without the Chief's permission. Please, tell me your name so I can talk to him and…" She came into the room, following another woman, speaking nervously.

The woman that was with Sasha was walking towards them, without caring about what Sasha was telling her, which was obvious because of her glance. She was about 5'45 feet tall, had long straight black hair, small grey eyes and pale skin. She stopped at the other head of the table and looked at Erwin.

"May I?" She said. Her voice was cold, harsh. Erwin nodded to her and she took sit. They looked each other for a while until she smirked. "So, who are these?" She asked, referring to Hanji and Eren. They both swallowed and stared at her.

"Levi's closest comrades." Erwin answered. He was leaned back on his chair, and wasn't of thinking of moving. "They have been taking care of him since he got blind." He explained later, softening his voice.

The woman cruelly laughed. "It must be true, then. Blindness, how possible was that?" She chuckled and sighed. Then her look turned kind of creepy; it turned more serious. "You must have serious problems to call me. What is it that you want?"

Erwin took a time to think. He needed to choose his words carefully, since he knew Charlotte was even more unapproachable than Levi was. "Tomorrow morning the Scouting Legion will leave because of an expedition." He started. "I want you to stay here and watch over Levi while we're gone."

Charlotte changed her facial expression to another angrier one. "You made me leave my work to what?! What kind of woman do you think I am?!" She yelled at him.

"Not a very maternal one, I know, but professional." He stayed calm. "I know you have twelve students at your academy now and how much they pay every month. I'll pay to you all that money plus a fifty percent, for one expedition."

She leaned back on her chair and crossed her legs, getting comfortable not only physically but with the idea of getting money out of that. "Interesting. That's a lot of money." She commented and crossed now her arms. "And what exactly do I have to do?" Asked now more interested on the work.

"You must be kidding us…" Eren interrupted. "You really are going to collect money out of your son?!" He got exasperate.

"I still don't know. I don't have the details yet." She stared at Eren with more than a nonchalant look, but more to a cold one. Compared to that, Levi's look used to be a very friendly one. "But if the offer is good, I may accept, even though I'll have to work with that idiot." She glanced at Erwin again, leaving Eren bitterly surprised. "So?"

Erwin put a hand on Eren's shoulder, trying to calm him down. "While we're out, I want you to watch over him and teach him to overcome his blindness through his ears. I know you can do that." He sighed softly, in a relaxing way. "For that, you might want him to use that." He pointed at the violin case that was still on one side of the table.

The woman stood up immediately and opened it, taking in her hands the violin inside of it. She examined the instrument and tried to tune it. Her face turned with a thoughtful expression. "It's not new, but it has been renewed." She played a little and nodded. "It's in good condition, at least."

"Can you do it?" Erwin joined his hands in front of him over the table and crossed his fingers, waiting.

"Of course I can." She smirked. "And I think I will." She sat again and made herself comfortable. "Are there more details?"

"A condition, actually." She raised one of her eyebrows after that, to which Hanji startled. She had the same facial expressions than Levi, but they were ten times creepier. "If by the time we come back, Levi has the slightest sign of having been hit by you, I won't pay you any money."

"Tch," She grunted and crossed her arms. "And how do you expect me to discipline him?"

"You'll have to find a more humane way." Silence, a long one.

"Fine." She finally said and stood up. "I'll go get my stuff. Get me a room, meanwhile. A good one." She left. Hanji then sighed as if she had been holding her breath.

"God, with someone like her, there's no surprise on Levi's behavior." She whispered, frightened, apprehensive. "Tell me the truth, Erwin; she's cruel, isn't she?"

"Yes, she is, but sadly, she's the only person to whom Levi wouldn't disrespect, and that makes her the best person to discipline him right now." He sighed and tossed his head back.

"But, it's kind of sad the fact that she's going to do it for money and just for that." Eren whispered, sadly.

"That's only one more point in favor to us." That called the attention of both Hanji and Eren. Erwin then explained, "She's going to do the work right. She won't stop until she had succeeded because she's motivated by the amount of money I offered. By the time we're back, Levi won't need a guide anymore. I'm sure of it."

By the morning, everybody was getting ready to leave the headquarters to start the journey to Karanese. Eren was together with his friends from the 104th trainee squad when he looked back at the door of the castle, where he saw Levi leaning on a wall, as if he were watching. He approached to him on the wall and sighed.

"How come you're here and not already riding your horse?" Levi's words were unusually soft.

"I… I came to talk to you before leaving." He replied, shrugging.

"What is it, then?" Levi tilted his head.

"I'm… I'm really sorry you can't come with us. I really didn't want all this to happen." Eren whispered and looked down. Because of that, he missed Levi's little smile.

"It's ok, don't worry about that anymore. It's just destiny." Eren looked at him a bit surprised. Those were words he wasn't expecting. "Just, do me a favor, ok?"

"What? What is it?" Levi was giving him too many surprises in less than five minutes.

"Just get back safe." He said. "Bring everyone back with you." That took Eren's breath out. "And I mean all of you, group of freaks."

"Group of freaks?" Eren couldn't be more surprised.

"Arlert, Ackerman and you, idiot. The three freaks that I can't get rid of… Not that I'm trying, anyway." He crossed his arms.

Eren smiled, happy to hear that, and without caring how Levi would surely react to that, he approached and hugged him. Surprisingly, Levi hugged back and, some seconds after, pushed him away. "Don't let anybody die. I want you all back here tomorrow morning." With that, Eren remembered Petra's words. "_What the Corporal says is the law._" They would be back.

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_I hope you liked this! _

_Next time we'll be watching Levi playing some music, so stay tunned!_


	5. Chapter 5

_Hello~! In this ocation it took me less time to write this chapter compared with the other, though it's shorter than the last one. I'm sorry for that, it's just that I write this on my cellphone and there it seems longer haha. _

_Anyway, thanks for reading! See you in the next chapter!_

_By the way, I almost forgot. I just saw a review from a spanish speaker guest, so here's a message for those who speak spanish and read this:_

_Si hay por allí más personas que leen este fic y desearían que lo traduzca al español, por favor, háganmelo saber! De verdad no me costaría nada, pues el español es mi lengua materna, pero quisiera saber cuántos son antes de hacerlo. ¡Gracias de antemano! _

_Ok, let's get to reading, folks~!_

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Chapter 5  
_Lonely_

They had spent at least two and a half weeks outside Wall Rose, but killed not more than twelve titans. That had been the easiest mission they had ever had, not to mention that the titans they'd killed were more stupid than usual. Hanji theorized that their stupidity kept them wandering around instead of going towards Wall Rose as the other titans did. The days went by they were finally getting back to Karanese.

"Hey, guys, do you realize the opportunity that is presenting to us nowadays?" Jean's voice brought Eren back to reality. The people from the 104th trainee squad were together near him, so he could hear everything.

"The opportunity to reclaim the cities from the east, west and north of Wall Maria?" Asked Connie cheerfully, followed by Sasha's words.

"Or the opportunity to recover the farming grounds!" She screamed in happiness.

"No, guys, the opportunity to avenge us." Jean corrected, to which a general "Uh?" was heard. "I mean, now's the time to make fun out of Levi. You know, for all the time he pissed us off." He said with his handsome smile.

Connie gave him a disapproval glance. "You must be joking, right? You can't be planning on having fun out of a blind person, even if it would be him." He reprimanded him.

Jean moved his hands in denial. "Don't worry; I'm not thinking on serious stuff, just a couple of little jokes to piss him off." He explained. "Besides, I saw him having a lot of fun the other day. He was actually laughing." Jean had put it as if it were impossible.

"What kind of jokes do you mean?" Sasha seemed interested. She had been sent to run for hours by Levi; she had reasons.

"I don't know, putting a lizard on his coffee or something like that, just to freak him out." Jean answered. That made Eren laugh; he could in fact imagine the scene.

As they were getting closer to Wall Rose, so did their squads, which meant that his friends were close enough to them for even Erwin listen their chatter.

"I volunteer for that!" Sasha laughed. "What do you think it's gonna be his reaction?"

"He's a clean freak; I guess he'll freak out, at least." Jean commented. "If not, we can always sit and watch." They all laughed at that point; without noticing that they were actually about to get inside Karanese. The door was just some meters forward.

Eren rolled his eyes and sighed. He knew that Levi was well-known because of his behavior, so it was to be expected that kind of thoughts from other people. He understood it, but didn't share it; he respected him more than he could imagine he would. He sighed, worried; Armin had just left them.

.

The sound of the violin was echoing throughout the entire castle, accompanied with the soft sound of spring birds singing on the branches of the trees; Levi could now even listen to the gentle wind blowing through the rooms and getting out the windows. It was relaxing, softening; he liked that. However, no matter how much that was relaxing for him, he was bored. Why so? He was alone; alone with a woman that wouldn't even have a chat with him after working on whatever she had came up with.

He had preferred to be in Trost, surrounded by the city's sounds; people talking on the street, screaming merchants in the market, children playing around, things that could distract him from his mother's voice. But instead, he was alone with her in that old castle in the middle of nowhere between Rose and Sina.

With nothing more to do that afternoon, he just continued playing the melodies that he could remember from his childhood, those that he knew by heart and could play it without losing any musical note, following the rhythm of the clippety-clop of a horse. The clippety-clop of a horse. Clippety-clop? He stopped and paid attention, getting closer to the window of his room. It was, in fact, a horse approaching the Legion headquarters.

Full of excitement as he had never been before, he ran down the stairs to receive whoever that would be going there. He didn't fall, as he did weeks ago; he didn't get lost, ad he did weeks ago; and he didn't need help, as he did weeks ago. He hadn't noticed the change.

"Levi!" He didn't recognize it right away; it took him some second to notice that it was Armin's voice.

"Armin, you sound… weird." He said, getting closer to his horse while he could listen that Armin was getting off his hose. "Why are you alone? Where are the others?"

"Yeah, it's just that I have a cold." He answered to the first comment and sneezed. "I left them in Karanese. They're going to Sina right now; the Legion got invited to the Capital to an awards ceremony or something like that."

"What?" He listened to him as he was leading his horse to the stables. "What about the expedition?"

Armin sneezed again. "It went fine, more than that, actually. Nobody died and the number of titans was low. I think we finished cleaning the area." Armin could barely speak because of his stuffy nose. He left the horse in his corral and turned to find Levi again. "How have you been, by the way?"

"Bored as hell." That stole a chuckle from Armin. They both entered the building again and Levi went with Armin to his room, helping him to change his clothes and get on his bed. "I'll let you know when dinner's ready."

"Wait…" Armin suddenly realized they had left Levi alone; or that's what he thought. "Are you going to cook? Isn't that dangerous? I mean…" He was interrupted by Levi.

"Easy, boy." He sighed. "I'm not cooking. We're not alone."

"Then… Who's cooking?"

"My mother."

Levi had taken a moment to answer that, and after he did, there was an unexpected silence. Armin stared at him, really surprised, and as he didn't say a thing, Levi just left the room without saying anything else. He didn't like the fact of talking about her, either.

Armin stayed leaned on his bed, resting, when the sound of the violin started again. It wasn't too many rooms away from his and he could feel it as if it were sounding right next to him. He didn't know what was it; he had never heard something like that before, he hadn't even heard any music before, except for Carla, who had sometimes sung one or two songs. But that wasn't the same. This was better; way much better.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep, being lulled by the sound of the violin. Hours later, almost at ten o'clock, he was awakened by Charlotte entering roughly into the room and left a hot plate of food on his night table in a derogatory way.

He opened his eyes slowly and got frozen as he saw her eyes. They were cold, expelling hate. "I'll kick the shit out of you if you don't eat it all." She said and left the room. Armin couldn't move for some moments, and actually didn't until Levi knocked his door and came in.

"Are you alright? How do you feel?" He asked gently from where he was standing.

"I'm... I'm alive, I guess." Armin answered chuckling, sitting now on the bed. "You can get closer if you want to." He invited.

Levi walked towards the bed and sat on the legs of the bed, leaning on the wall. "I convinced her to prepare you that. It's chicken soup." He whispered, as if it weren't easy for him to speak. "It will make you feel better."

Armin smiled. "Thanks." He sounded weird because of his cold, to which Levi chuckled. "By the way, I heard something before sleeping. What was it? Who was making that sound?"

"You mean the violin?" Levi startled. "I was playing it." He took a pause. "My mother's making me practice playing the violin and the piano. It helped me to develop my hearing, so it's less complicated to go around." He explained.

"That's great. I already saw you more comfortable with the environment, but didn't want to mention it..." He lowered his voice a bit. "You know, for not being rude or making it awkward."

Levi smiled and did as he was looking down. "I hadn't realized before how kind you are. I mean... To be a soldier, after all. You're strong in your own human way." He commented while hearing Armin take his meal and start eating.

After he finished, Levi took the empty plate to the kitchen and went to sleep. The next morning, Charlotte didn't accept again cooking for Armin since she was being paid only for watching over his son, so this time Levi himself went to the kitchen and prepared some tea. It took him half an hour to get upstairs with the cup of tea without dropping any of it.

"I'm sorry it's cold. It's the first time I come upstairs with a cup of something." He excused, to which Armin understood completely. "You're staying in bed today, right?" He was in fact, which meant another boring day for him. Before leaving the room, he turned to talk to him again. "Hey, I got stuff to do, but I think I'll get free before dinner. Can I ask you a favor, then?"

Armin looked at him, curious. "Yeah, what is it?"

"Well, I like to read, but now… " He shrugged. "Would you read out loud to me?" He asked, to which Armin accepted, surprised that they could have that in common.

They day went slow and boring, as usual, but at least with the comfort of having company now, because he was really missing everyone by that time. The last of his tasks that day was to give his horse a bath. It wouldn't be that hard, since he had already done it before being blind. He just tried now to correct his last time's mistakes. He was on it when he heard horses approaching; they were finally back. He turned to pay more attention to it, since he could not see them approaching, when Charlotte appeared to his side.

"You're not moving from here until you finish, and you're not talking to anyone either." She said roughly, as if she were pissed off. He grunted and reluctantly continued hi task.

.

As they were all getting closer to the headquarters, Eren left his squad at the back and hurried up to be in the front group with Erwin and Hanji, anxious to be finally "home". It was almost twilight when they finally got to the castle's entrance, from where they could see Levi near the stables, washing his horse as if he could perfectly see.

"Wow… Now that's a real change." Hanji whispered, surprised as they were approaching to the stables, but not being enough close to talk to him.

Then Charlotte appeared. She stood between all the people who were passing by and Levi, and when Eren tried to walk towards him, she stopped him. "He's not allowed to speak to anyone until he's finished." She snapped, taking Eren from his shoulders to turn him around and push him. Eren grunted.

"But, I haven't seen him in weeks!" He argued.

"Get out, I said." Charlotte narrowed her eyes; Eren shivered and walked away.

Eren went back to meet Erwin and Hanji, who were watching Levi from the distance. He did the same and noticed something; Levi seemed different, somehow he seemed more human, yet his only physical change was that his hair was longer. But there was a change, indeed. His movements seemed to flow better, they were gentle; they weren't of a soldier, but of a different man.

Charlotte interrupted their sight when she approached and asked Erwin to have a meeting. She led them all to a room where there was a piano and Levi's violin.

"What is it that you want to talk?" Erwin was curious, as much as the others.

"I tried to train him in as many areas as I could." She started, looking up to Erwin, serious. "He can prepare his meals, his teas and coffees; he can go up and downstairs with any problem, I made him memorize the castle, actually." She sighed, remembering. "He can do pretty much everything, as long as he can hear properly. I trained his hears almost perfectly and worked on his memory. He shouldn't have any problems from now on, unless he leaves this castle alone. He'll need a guide for that." She finished.

Nobody dared to speak after her. Except Eren; "How did you do it?"

"Working 16 hours a day." She replied. "If you want to, I can show you how effective the work was." Erwin sat on a chair that was near the door, looking to the piano and the window behind it. He then nodded, as if he were accepting her offer. She walked to the window and talked to Levi from there, without raising her voice. "Levi, hurry up and come to the studio." She turned back and sat in front of the piano. "I want all of you to be as silent as you can."

Two minutes later, Levi was coming in. "Why did you call?"

"Take your violin. It's here." She said.

He closed the door behind him and walked to pick his violin. He put the end of the violin on his collarbone and lowered his head on the chin rest while his left hand held the instrument's neck. His other hand grasped the bow and placed it on the strings, ready to play a tune.

Charlotte started to play a soft melody on the piano, and when she started again, she talked, softer than usual, "Follow it, and while you do so, I want you to figure out how many people are inside this room, including us." She continued playing as she spoke up. "Then, point them. Show me where they are, and only if you can, tell me who they are."

Eren was about to say that that was impossible, but she looked at him so roughly, that he just swallowed. Meanwhile, Erwin seemed fascinating by the idea of Levi achieving the task. And so he started to play. It was the perfect match to the music Charlotte was playing; a soft and slow melody that pleases the ears. Eren felt that he was about to melt to the pleasure of pure listening; Hanji was more fascinated as if it were a titan playing; and Erwin had the wider smile he ever had. He was proud.

Then, Levi surprised them again. "Three people, five counting us." He said to Charlotte, and then turned to point Erwin with the neck of his instrument, and when Hanji breathed out in surprised, he pointed him out. "You're making it easy, freak." He said, and some second after, he pointed Eren.

That was a miracle.

Charlotte stopped playing, followed by her son, and stood up. "There. Your dog is completely trained. Can I go now? I expect you to send me the money soon." Erwin nodded, still shocked with Levi's performing. Charlotte then left the room without saying good bye or anything else to anyone.

Levi shrugged, "I hate her, like, seriously." Erwin laughed, Hanji hugged him and Eren smiled. They were back.

Late that night, the table was full of his comrades again. He poured his tea and sat down with them, in silence, feeling happy, smiling softly. He felt good as he heard the others talk about their mission, he felt cheerful when Sasha really tried to scare him with a blizzard and really enjoyed sending Jean to get another cup of tea.

"Levi? Levi, are you falling asleep?" Eren's words took him back to reality. They were both sitting next to Armin while he was reading out loud a book that Levi brought him.

"Uhm, no, I was just thinking." He answered.

"What were you thinking?"

"I was realizing that I missed you all… A lot." He whispered. "Don't ever be gone for so long."

* * *

_I hope you liked this! _

_Remember to leave a comment below, and if you have anything you'd like me to add to the story, just tell me! _

_See you!_


	6. Chapter 6

_Hi again!  
As the story until now has been kind of sad, on this chapter I want people to laugh, so that's why I'm writing this, besides of the need to continue with the plot I'm preparing –which, I have to say, it's going to be looooooooong-. There are more original characters coming, so be prepared!_

_Also, I received some messages with people getting mad because of Jean's behavior, and all I'm going to say Is, please, relaaaaaaaaax~ I know very well that Jean's not like that, but sadly it's part of the plot I'm preparing and don't worry about it because he's going to stop being like this. It's just momentary~! _

_Aside from that, there are going a lot of surprises coming, and for those who are waiting for some Ereri/Rivaere stuff… Isn't it cute the way it's going developing sloooow? Well, I'll let you read now, and then we get into commenting that, haha~_

_By the way, I hope you all like Alice in Wonderland!_

_ ._

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Chapter 6  
_Party_

People were happy; that was the main feeling wherever you would go, even into the Scouting Legion, because for the first time since it was created, the Scouting Legion had something to be truly proud about. But those weren't only good times for them, but to the Stationary Guard as well; and since their goal was the same, Chief Erwin suggested to the Stationary Guard to work together. Humanity had never been happier since the titans appeared a century ago. Also, that was a day to celebrate, but people were too busy.

That morning Erwin had left the headquarters towards Sina in order to have a meeting with the Commander in charge of the defense of the East. He left together with Hanji and Eren. Armin was still sick. Nothing to do for Levi.

He was sitting next to the window of his room, which was open, letting the sun enter through it. He was listening to everybody doing their daily stuff, having their hallway chatter and stuff. He sighed and leaned back on his chair, raising his feet to set them on the frame of the window. He was comfortable, starting to fall asleep until someone knocked on the door.

"Come in." He said, putting on the hood of his cloak. He was using the cloak from the Scouting Legion, just because of the hood. He was sick of people whining about how his face looked like with the bandages and the lack of eyes. Because of that, he was also using the white pants, the jacket and the boots, to complete the outfit.

He listened as the door opened and someone gave some steps in. "Levi, can I talk to you?" Surprisingly, it was Mikasa.

"Yeah, sure." He replied, without moving from his position. He noticed Mikasa closed the door, but stayed where she was. "Aren't you getting closer?" He asked, to which she walked a little and stopped on the middle of the room. "What is it?"

"Well…" She put her scarf over his mouth, as she usually does. "I've been thinking about what you said." She sounded as she was having a really bad mood.

"I'm not in the mood for another discussion, so don't look for it." Levi grunted before she continued.

"No, it's not that." She snapped back; then, she calmed down. "I… I want to apologize. I'm sorry I behaved as I did. I was wrong." He was shocked.

"Wait... What?"

"You heard it well, don't make me repeat it!" She complained. "I'm sorry, alright? I was being childish and selfish, but I won't do it anymore. I just understood what you were doing and… I appreciate it."  
Levi took a moment to think what to say, but said only what he was pleased to say.

"You sound like you've grown up in one day." He commented, to which Mikasa shrugged, sighed and turned to leave, but Levi was too bored to let her go. "What are you doing today?"

She got stunned. "Uhm… Nothing, I guess." She paused. "Eren's gone until tomorrow and Armin's still sick."

"Yeah, I know." Of course he knew. Those two and Hanji were the only ones who could bear him lately. In that moment he remembered how much he missed his friends from his squad. Levi's unit; good old days. Petra would surely be with him in that moment if she were alive. He didn't notice when Mikasa left. "No manners at all." He whispered; she didn't even say good bye.

He spent the afternoon in his room, still upset about the fact that Erwin and the others had left without even telling him they would, and because of that he had spent the morning looking for them. As he was upset, he had lunch in his room, alone, because as they had left him alone, he wanted to be alone.

It wasn't until late afternoon that he left his room and went to the stables. He still wanted to be alone. He walked straight towards his horse, which he knew perfectly where she was, and entered on his corral.

The young mare cheerfully greeted him by licking his hands, as usual. "Hi girl, I missed you too." He whispered and nuzzled her. She seemed anxious, something that he could notice. "Easy, girl, we're not going out. C'mon, sit." He calmed her down with some petting and made her lean on the floor. "Good girl." He sat down beside her and leaned on her, snuggling.

He stayed there, hugging the grey mare and almost falling asleep until he felt some quick footsteps getting near. Whoever that was approaching there was walking pretty fast, and judging by the steps, he thought that he or she was angry, but some seconds after he figured out it was actually a woman sobbing.

In fact, was she… Mikasa?

He stood up and came out of the corral, which made the mare stood up and neigh, and walked towards the back of the stables where she was.

"Mikasa?" He asked in order to confirm it was her.

"Leave me alone..." It was indeed her.

"What happened?"

"Leave me alone, I said!" She yelled at him, to whom he instantly replied, "I won't."

He got even closer to her as she remained in silence and crouched in front of her. She was sitting on the floor and hugging her legs. Of course, he couldn't see that, but he could hear she wasn't standing.

"What happened? Tell me." He whispered kindly.

"I'm just sad... Now can you leave me alone?" She snapped, to which Levi sat down and crossed his legs. She sighed after some minutes. "I already told you... I'm sad. But why do you care, anyway?"

"Why shouldn't I?" Mikasa widened her eyes in surprise.

"Because I yelled at you... Hated you for wrong reasons and treated you really bad." She pointed out.

"Yeah, but you apologized. We're good now, aren't we?" He sounded relaxed about the topic.

"How can you forgive and forget so easily?"

"Uhm..." That was something he wasn't expecting. "Maybe because it wasn't _that_ big deal? Maybe because I'm older? I don't know, it's just part of the past now, even if it was this same afternoon."

"Morning." She corrected.

"Yeah, whatever, I can't see what time it is, remember?"

"I'm sorry."

"It's ok." He shrugged. "So, what's making you sad?"

"Well..." She didn't want to say it, but as Levi looked serious, she just said it. "I'm sad because it's my birthday and it seems that everyone forgot it, especially Armin and Eren."

Levi raised one eyebrow, surprised. "Seriously? Nobody remembered? Not even... Uhm... What's the name of this guy that has a crush on you?" Mikasa wasn't answering. "That one who's last name's Kirstein."

"You mean... Jean? Well, he's the only one who has remembered but... What did you just say?" She sounded surprised.

"That he has a crush on you... You hadn't notice? God, that's why he hadn't achieved anything? Poor guy." He commented. "Anyway, I wouldn't blame Armin if he hadn't said happy birthday to you yet, I mean, he's been sleeping all day since he came back."

"Yeah, he's got a really bad cold…" She commented as she shrugged, but spoke suddenly again, "How can you say that about Jean? You don't even know him."

Levi chuckled. "There's no need to know him to notice that. It's been obvious since day one. I even though you knew it and were ignoring him."

Mikasa shaked her head, still not used to Levi's blindness. "No, I didn't know that." She whispered without believing it. "Then… What should I do?"

"Happy birthday, by the way." He said. "How can you even ask that? If you like him, tell him; if you don't, tell him anyway." He sighed feeling that he needed to find older people to hang out with, so he wouldn't be giving such an advice like that to a girl like her. "Are you leaned on something?" He suddenly asked. "I mean… Is there a wall behind you where I could lean too?"

Still not used to that. "Uhm… Yes, there's a wall behind me." After hearing, Levi crawled towards her side and carefully leaned on the wall, cleaning his clothes after he finished. There was a moment of silence.

"So, what are you doing tonight?" Levi finally broke the silence.

"I told you I'd do nothing." She answered. "Not that I have someone to do something with."

"Right, I get it, the blind guy doesn't count." He snapped while standing up to leave.

"No, wait, I didn't mean to…" She stood up too and tried to explain herself, "I'm sorry, it's just that I'm not used to the idea of even talking to you… I just stopped hating you this same morning!"

Levi stopped after hearing to that. "You really need to grow up." He said. "Anyway, you know what the problem is? It's that we don't know each other. Wasn't that what we yelled the other day?"

She took a moment to think about it. "Yeah, you're right." She said with a shrug. "What do you suggest, then? To get to know each other?"

"Exactly. I mean, why shouldn't we?" He answered, and then he thought he should stop using that expression. "Besides, we're both alone today and it's your birthday, and birthdays are to celebrate them."

She smiled a little, feeling way much better than ten minutes before. "Alright then. Do you have any more ideas?"

"It depends. What time is it?" He hesitated.

"About six, seven, I guess. Why?"

He smiled. "Because if it's that early, we may get to Sina before midnight, and if we do, I know the perfect place we can go and have good drinks and entertainment." He took a moment to continue. "And don't tell me that you don't drink 'cause you're a minor, because you _will_ drink something tonight. You're not skipping that with me."

"O-ok." She analyzed the situation for some seconds. "But if we go, we won't be able to get back until tomorrow morning."

"Don't worry, we can stay at Erwin's place, and if we do, I bet that they'll all be there too, so once we get home, we can show off what good time we had and slap all those bastards for leaving you alone on your birthday, especially Eren." He chuckled and Mikasa laughed loudly.

"Yeah, I like the idea… But, are you sure we can stay there? Isn't he going to… reprimand me?"

"No, of course he won't. Trust me." Levi smiled. "Go change your clothes; you really don't want to hang around with the uniform." She started to walk cheerfully towards him before he spoke again. "And if someone inside asks you where you're going or something, just lie and say that I need you to take me... wherever you invent."

"Can I say to the psychiatric or the hospital?" She laughed, to which Levi frowned.

"The hospital is just fine."

Mikasa went to her room and changed her clothes, or some of them. She was still wearing the white blouse and pants of the uniform, but changed her boots for some casual shoes and the jacket for a black one; but she kept the scarf. It didn't take her more than ten minutes to get back downstairs, where she looked for Levi; but instead, she found Jean again.

"Hey, are you going out?" He asked nicely.

"Uh, yeah. Uhm…" She tried to avoid him and look busy. "Well, I'm taking Levi to the hospital."

"If you want to, I can take him there for you." He offered, nicely again.

"That would be nice, but I was ordered to watch over him while Chief Erwin and Eren are gone." She lied. She was getting really nervous with him, just because of what Levi had said about him.

"Yeah, but, they don't really need to know." He tried again. "I mean, I know you hate him and considering it's your birthday…"

"I don't hate him." She interrupted; and Levi appeared, coming down the stairs in the right moment. He was wearing casual clothes too, without the usual cravat. She then remembered that since he got blind, he hadn't used it.

"Can we go now?" He asked. Jean was still stunned.

"Sure. Let's go get the horse." She replied and waved goodbye to Jean. Levi just walked beside him without paying attention to him.

They both rode Levi's horse, being him behind Mikasa, who was leading. "Towards Sina." Levi had said and Mikasa rode the rose to full speed. It was quite a long trip, but they managed to get to Hermiha District, the city from the south of Wall Sina. Once there, Levi told her to go through the city and cross the inner door, where he told her to continue until she finds a place called "Bohemian sub". Mikasa didn't ask a thing about it. They got down the horse and tied it up outside the building. It was an attractive old house.

"Come here, we have to gate-crash you." Levi whispered softly as he encircled her waist, hugging her. "Whatever I say, just play along." He added. She whispered an "ok" back as they approached to the door, where there was a man guarding.

"Don't you seem too young to get in here, girl?" He said rudely.

"Actually not anymore. I'm bringing the lady to celebrate her birthday." Levi replied, talking with the same accent he had when he got drunk weeks before. He didn't pay more attention to the man, who stared rudely at them as they got into the house.

Mikasa looked carefully the inside. In front of them, there was a hallway that had at least seven or eight different doors and to their right, there was a stair to some place down. As soon as they got in, Levi took one of Mikasa's arms and turned to his right. "I need you to lead me. Otherwise, I'll fall." She went down first as she led him, holding him every time he was about to fall. Once, down, she got surprised with what she saw.

There was a large room, full with chairs and tables, people sitting in some of them and having drinks. In one side there was a bar, and at the back, a little stage. There were some lanterns on the walls, illuminating smoothly and giving a cozy feeling. "What is this place?" Mikasa asked.

"You'll see." Levi answered as he walked unsteadily towards the bar. Mikasa followed him and both of them sat in front of it. The barman approached them as he was cleaning some glasses. "What can I serve you?" He said as a matter of routine.

"A glass of whiskey for both of us, and leave the bottle." Levi replied, to which the young man stared at him for a while.

"Levi? Is it really you?" The man had recognized him.

.

Somewhere near in Hermiha District, Eren was following Erwin together with Hanji as they were riding their horses slowly through the city's streets. He sighed softly, being really tired.

"Erwin, can we rest at least for tonight? I really don't think I'll make it to Trost during the night." Hanji whined as she sighed.

"Don't worry; I'm not thinking of traveling during the night." Erwin sounded tired as well.

"Then, where are we going?" Eren questioned, being distracted by a soldier from the Military Police who ran beside them and entered a near house with a rush. It was a woman, he could notice.

"What a mess…" Erwin whispered as he looked to the woman run into the house. "We're staying at my house tonight." He then answered Eren's question and stopped in front of the same house the woman went in.

"Here?" Hanji asked a little skeptical. It was a two story house that seemed that was abandoned.

Erwin jumped off his horse and opened the side gate to get the horses into the garden and, after they got in, he closed it. Then he leaded them inside the house. They could immediately see a living room where there were books stacked up everywhere; on the table, the couch, the floor, the furniture, seriously everywhere.

"Oh God…" Erwin sighed and walked towards the stairs, and before he could talk, they heard a scream from upstairs.

"Dad? Is that you?" It was the woman who had recently run into the house that now was running down the stairs. "Why didn't you warn me you were coming?" She complained and quickly hugged Erwin while she was still changing his jacket from the Military Police to a brown one. She then looked to Eren and Hanji and smiled. "Hi, guys." She greeted them as she knew them, but she didn't.

"Are you going somewhere?" Erwin asked gently, following her with his eyes.

"Yep, I'm going to drink, pass out and stay at Giovanna's." She replied, unconcerned about her father's possible reaction to that. "Today the King approved another of my projects, so it's time to celebrate." She sang cheerfully as she walked towards the door. "See you tomorrow morning?" She asked to Erwin, he nodded and she left.

Eren and Hanji were baffled at the scene. "What was that?" Hanji questioned.

"My daughter, she's kind of cheerful all the time." Erwin replied. "Shall we go upstairs?" They followed him without paying too much attention to the mess on the living room, although Hanji was very interested on the content of those books. "I suppose that as she's staying with her friend, you can sleep in her room, Hanji. Eren will take Levi's room." Those words really surprised them.

"Levi's room?" They both asked curiously at the same time.

"Oh, yeah, he lived here for a while before becoming a soldier. He still has his room here." Eren was now full of questions to ask, but Erwin avoided to give more way to the questioning and sent them to sleep. So they did.

.

Back at the Bohemian Sub, Levi and Mikasa had managed to strike up a friendly conversation after having talked with the barman, who Mikasa found out that he was an acquaintance of Levi from the time when he lived on the streets. After that, they changed to a table on a corner of the room from which Mikasa had direct sight to the stage, though there was no one there. During the first minutes, Levi had taught her how to drink properly the whiskey they were sharing, then they talked about trivial stuff, daily things and, surprisingly, they gossiped about Eren.

They were laughing loudly when Mikasa sighed and left his glass on the table. "You're very talkative today." She said chuckling.

"Yes, I am. Do I have another option?"He replied, shrugging and smiling. He was getting drunk already. "I used to observe a lot, but now that option's out of the game. Now I can only be talkative, because people don't like when someone touches them, you know."

Mikasa laughed with that. "Both options are weird coming from you, especially that humor you have."

"I've always had it, but I wasn't talkative." He pointed out. Then Mikasa gave a look around and noticed something. "Is it normal when people from the Military Police come here?" She asked.

"Not much of them come here, only the ones that have lived on the streets know this place." He explained, to which Mikasa chuckled because of his 'funny talking', as she put it.

She followed with her glance the group of people that had come into the place. There were about six or seven people, but only two men among them. One of the men was wearing his jacket of the Military Police, as well as another girl, some two more girls were wearing the jacket of the Stationary Guard, which draw Mikasa's attention. The other man was just wearing some baggy clothes and the only woman that wasn't wearing military clothes had a brown jacket.

They sat down at a table that was in the center of the room, ordered multiple bottles of different kinds of alcohol and started to talk and laugh as loudly as they could. She tried to distract from them as she was following the conversation she was having with Levi, who seemed not to care about all the people that was getting noisy. But she actually didn't distract from them until Levi changed the subject of their chatter.

"Well, tell me something, do you like Jean or not?" He questioned while leaning back on his chair and crossing his legs, smirking.

"Eh? What?" She looked at him with surprise. That wasn't expected. "I… I'm not sure. I mean, I hadn't thought of that yet."

"So, you like Eren." Levi deduced.

"What?! No! He's like a brother to me." She excused, thanking God that Levi couldn't see the blush on her face.

"Then who do you like? If it's not Eren and it's not Jean, what are you doing with your life? Is not like you can live your love life after the war with the titans, because all of us know it's not going to finish soon." That felt like a bucket of cold water.

"I hadn't thought of it like that before…" She answered, shrugging. "But, if you say so, then who do _you_ like?" She asked back, trying to distract him for making such questions to her.

"No one, not for now." He replied, relaxed about it. "But I haven't lost my time." He added. Was he already drunk? He seemed like.

"What do you mean by that?" She blinked.

"God, do I have to explain everything?" He complained, taking his glass of whiskey to drink a little; but he stopped.

Mikasa stared at him curiously, wondering what had happened to him for having stopped like that. A sound then distracted her. The people from some minutes before were now on the stage playing some instruments. One man was playing some drums, other woman was playing a guitar, other was playing a double bass –which Mikasa didn't recognized-, and then she suddenly noticed that at the back of the stage there was a piano. The woman of the brown jacket was holding a tambourine and they all were playing some soft melody together.

"White Rabbit." Levi whispered.

"What?" Mikasa couldn't get her eyes out of the stage.

"White Rabbit, the name of the song." He repeated.

"How do you know?"

"I know the song, and I've read the books in which they got inspired to write the song." He explained.

Mikasa noticed one more detail: the people that were present were now quiet, in silence. Then the woman started to sing, and when she did, Levi threw back his head.

"_One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small_." Her voice was absorbing. "_And the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all_." She started to dance, moving her hips from left to right and vice versa. _"Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall!"_

"God, I should love her." Levi whispered, but Mikasa didn't pay attention to him, though she _did_ listen to that. The woman's words followed Levi's.

"_And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall…"_ Her voice was very well playing with the tones. _"Tell'em a hookah smoking caterpillar has given you the call… To call Alice, and she was too small!"_

Mikasa was stunned with how loud she could sing without losing any musical note. "_When the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go…"_ Her voice could be heard around the whole place. _"And you've just had some kind of mushroom and your mind is moving slow." _Levi gasped.

"_Go ask Alice, I think she will know!_" She sang surprisingly ever loudly and started to walk towards the people. At the same time, Levi joined her singing. "_When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead; and the white knight is talking backwards and the red queen's off with her head!_"

This time she sang alone. "_Remember what the doormouth said… Feed your head, feed your head!" _At the end, she kind of screamed and as she looked at Levi, she laughed.

People gave her a vigorous applause as she returned to the stage, without losing Levi from her sight. Some minutes after, they were approached by the woman that was singing before. She was tall, about 178 centimeters, without adding that she was using wedge heel boots. She also had blue eyes and a light golden brown hair, long enough to cover her breast. She had widened eyes at that moment and seemed to be holding her breath. She leaned forward to see Levi's face, which scared Mikasa a little more.

"Oh, _mon petit _Levi_, c'est vous._" She exclaimed and pulled a chair to sit. "How have you been? Did you receive my letter?"

"Yes, I actually did." Levi whispered softly, as if he were excited. "Alessa, this is Mikasa Ackerman, a comrade from the Legion." He introduced her. "Mikasa, this is my best friend, Alessa Smith."

"It's nice to meet you." The tall woman said, extending her hand for a shake.

Mikasa didn't react well passed some seconds. "Smith?" She asked as they shaked hands.

"Chief Erwin's daughter." Alessa had added to clarify the coincidence of the last name.

Suddenly, Alessa and Levi started a chatter that seemed endless; they were speaking gushingly, as if they hadn't seen in years. Soon Mikasa figured out that they hadn't seen each other since Eren was sent to prison four months ago and that they were both keen on getting drunk together, although Levi was way more ahead on that matter. But that wasn't the only thing she found out about his new friend.

It was about 5 am in the morning when they finally left the tavern. Mikasa rode Levi's horse and fell asleep on it and Alessa loaded Levi on her back, pulling from the reins of the horse to walk home. They were almost getting home when Levi stopped talking with Alessa for some minutes.

"Have you ever been in a very dark place, and because of the darkness you start to feel like... sleepy?"

"Yes." She replied.

"Well, that kind of happens to me all day long now." He whined.

"Do you want to sleep?"

"Oh, I'm begging for that."

"Ok, sleep then." She said softly and felt Levi's head lean on her shoulder. Once home, she left the horse with the others and led Mikasa to the second floor. "My bed is big, we can sleep there. Although that red-haired woman must be sleeping there. Don't you mind sleeping the three of us in the same bed?"

Mikasa denied, without really caring if she would sleep on a bed, a couch or on the floor.

Alessa left Mikasa on said room and then carried Levi to his room, where she found Eren sleeping. "I hope you don't mind sleeping together, folks." She whispered and leaned Levi on the space between him and the wall. She took his boots out and covered him with the blankets.

"Good night, boys." She said and left the room, thinking that she'd better go and sleep with her father.

.

* * *

_Well, thanks for reading~! I hope you like this and leave a comment._

_Regarding the Hermiha District, I'm not quite sure is that's the real name of the city, since I got it from Shingeki no Kyojin Wikia and pretty much everyone can edit that, so…_

_Anyway, I leave for you here a link to youtube for the song that Alessa performed at the Bohemian Sub. It's actually called Whitte Rabbit and it's performed by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals as a cover of Jefferson Airplane. __www . youtube watch ?v= IB0dPcrxCkw_  


_If you want to suggest any song for Levi or someone else to sing or play, leave a comment below!_


	7. Chapter 7

_Hello again~! Sorry for taking so much time to update, I'm really sorry, but University takes a lot of my time lately, especially with the upcoming tests and stuff. Because of that, I think I won't update again until the next week, I guess. If I can have the time to write something before Sunday, we'll be very lucky. _

_Also, this chapter was rather difficult to write. There are some things that were planned and some that weren't. I'm also sorry for not including Kluer and KatrinaDeValois' words and phrasal verbs and for not responding to your reviews – I've been very busy, but I promise I will! _

_I hope you like this chapter, though it has no music today. But as I promised, there are some surprises~ Please, leave a comment! _

_Ah, I almost forgot! I took some time to draw this thing during the breaks between classes.  
i43 . tinypic (/) 2cd7rir . jpg  
You just have to erase the spaces in between to see it. If someone wants to paint it or improve it or whatever, feel free to do so! (:_

_ ._

* * *

Chapter 7  
_Feelings_

It was the middle of the night when he got cold. He stretched himself and shifted a little on the bed while pulling up the blankets, creepily noticing that he wasn't alone; there was someone behind him. He slowly turned to see, finding Levi deeply sleeping by his side. He startled as he suddenly moved away, looking at him with surprise. He was sure that he went to bed alone; he was sure Levi wasn't there when they got there; he was sure Levi should be in the castle. But there he was, breathing peacefully as he was asleep. How did that happen?

"What the hell?" He whispered as he tried to analyze the situation, though there wasn't anything to analyze. Levi was just sleeping beside him. Why was Levi sleeping _there_? Why was Levi on the same bed than _him_?

He looked at him more precisely. The bandages covering his eyes had dropped, leaving his wrinkled eyelids on sight. He shivered; seeing that was unbearable, so he tried to distract himself from that. The following detail he found was that Levi was curled up, covering himself with the blankets. He touched his face softly, barely grazing his skin to notice two more things: he was freezing, and his skin was surprisingly soft. Levi didn't fell that touch. He seemed not even know he wasn't alone and… Was that the smell of whiskey? "Drinking again, uh? Weird place to end up drunk…" He whispered.

With a resigned sigh, Eren leaned again on the bed, trying to not be too close to him, which was rather difficult since the bed was small, for one person only. He tried to sleep again, assuming that the others hadn't woken up yet because there wasn't any kind of noise on the house. Everything was quiet.

He went back to sleep without losing any more minute, having a deep sleep again –but now more conscious of the company he had- and didn't wake up again until the morning, when he had another surprise. As he opened his eyes, he saw a little shadow moving on the legs of the bed. He raised his head to see what it was; and it was a cat. A black cat was walking on and smelling the blankets. Then it approached them and smelled Levi's face inch by inch. He just snorted softly because of the tickling. Meanwhile Eren remained watching as the cat tried to get inside the bed and succeeded, walking under the blankets to the legs of the bed again and lied down to sleep. Then a purring was heard.

He draw now his attention to Levi, who was using his shoulder as a pillow and hugging him by his waist; and without knowing why, he got extremely nervous. Was Levi conscious of what he was doing? Was he still drunk? He ignored and closed his eyes, until some minutes after; he felt that Levi was moving on the bed. In fact, that was the reason why he woke up again. He could notice that Levi was lying sideways leaning on his elbow, touching the wall with his right hand. Eren figured out that he was trying to recognize where he was.

The next thing Levi did was to start putting his hand around him, until he found Eren's shoulder, the one he had been using as a pillow for about three hours. Eren didn't do anything; he was still too sleepy to react. Levi, who still had his hand on Eren's shoulder, moved it towards his neck and jaw, following to his cheek.

Then he hesitated and asked, "Eren?" That whisper finished waking him up. Eren didn't answer, waiting to see what would come next -being now nervous and without knowing why-. Levi then went for Eren's hair. Eren, still curious, continued without moving. Levi sighed, assuming that he was asleep, put a hand on the edge on the bed and moved over him to get out of bed.

But as he was trying to get one of his feet on the floor, his hand slipped from the bed and almost fell face down when Eren quickly caught him before hitting his face on the floor. Levi's upper body was hanging from the bed, but Eren lifted him up.

"Are you alright?" Eren could notice Levi's racing heartbeat and breathing.

Levi didn't answer to that. Instead, he avoided doing it. "Can you guide me to the bathroom?"

"I don't know where it is… It's not my house." Eren shrugged and Levi furrowed his eyebrows.

"Can you call Alessa, then?"

Eren blinked for some seconds. "Alessa?" He questioned. "The girl from the letter?"

"Uh, yeah." Levi seemed not to have patient that morning. "Long wavy hair, 1,78 meters tall, blue eyes. Go get her." He shoved him out of the bed and Eren quickly walked out of the room.

Now in the hallway, he didn't know what to do. He thought of looking on the other rooms, but didn't dare to, so he thought of looking for the bathroom. He took a look on the doors of the hallway; there were only three, the three rooms Erwin had mentioned last night, so the bathroom should be downstairs. He went downstairs.

"Morning." The woman of the previous night greeted him. She was sitting on the couch, wearing a white blouse and shorts and reading a book.

"Uhm…" He noticed as the description matched with her. "Are you Alessa?"

She raised her look from the book and stared at him. "Yes, I am." She replied kindly. "You must be Eren." She added.

"Yes, I am." He shrugged, how did she know? "Levi sent me to look for you… He wants you to help him with something, I guess."She laughed and left the book by her side.

"Ok, I'm coming." She said as she stood up and walked towards the stairs. "By the way, if you want breakfast, feel free to take something from the kitchen."

After she had gone, he stayed on the living room, looking at the names of the books. He could find countless topics: botanic, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, smithy, history, biology, literature English, and some other languages. But one in special caught his attention. It was a lonely book, the only one that was on a remote shelf. It was named after a woman, and on its cover, there was a drawing of two children.

He heard something on the second floor, but didn't pay attention to it. Instead, he took the book in his hands and opened it. It had a woman's handwriting and it was written in other language, French to be precise. He ventured through its pages and figured out that it was a kind of diary. Every page had a date on it, and most of the times, there was a drawing of the same two children from the cover. He continued turning the pages as he wondered who those children were.

He thought that Alessa was the girl of the drawings and, remembering Erwin's words, the boy could be Levi; but as the drawings showed the children growing up, he reached a page where there was a drawing of the girl only. She seemed sad and, below the drawing, it was written "_Il est mort_" with big and loopy handwriting. The following pages didn't have the boy on the drawings.

He was interrupted by Mikasa, who was standing in the last step of the stairs. "What are you doing?" She asked. He left the book immediately where it was.

"Nothing." He replied, looking at her with surprise and stepping back. "Wait… What are you doing here!?" He suddenly asked.

"I came to slap you, bastard." She said roughly, but then shrugged and softened her expression. "I mean… I came to celebrate my birthday. We went to a tavern."

"_We_? _We_ who?" He asked, getting closer to her, but stopping. "You don't mean you went out with Levi, do you?" He added. Was he jealous?

"Well, yeah." She also walked towards him and met him at the middle of the room. "We're kind of friends now…"

Eren was stunned. "Well, I'm happy for that." He wasn't. "Happy birthday, by the way. I didn't know the meeting would take all day. I'm really sorry."

Mikasa smiled and hugged him. "It's ok. Thanks."

After they hugged, they went to the kitchen and nicely prepared breakfast for everyone in the house. Soon, Hanji had joined them there, followed by Erwin, who took all the books from the table and put them somewhere else, explaining that his daughter was fond of reading. They were all taking breakfast when somebody opened the front door. Mikasa recognized him from the night before; he was wearing the uniform from the Military Police and he froze when he saw so many people sitting at the table on the living room. He was also carrying a bag and some pieces of paper on his hands.

They all stayed in silence until he spoke a little scared. "I'm looking for Alessa…" He whispered. "It's important." He added when he noticed Erwin's killing glance.

"Why do you have a key of my house?" Erwin talked; he was kind of angry.

"S-she gave it to us to use it when necessary…" He answered, swallowing.

Alessa got down the stairs in the perfect moment, just before Erwin could say another word. Her appearance made Hanji chuckle, even when she was trying not to. The reason for that was that Alessa was carrying Levi on her back as if he were a child, holding him from his thighs, and he was hugging her by her neck and resting his face on her shoulder.

She immediately knew that something wasn't right when she saw the man on the door. "What happened?" She asked, leaving Levi slide down her back. He almost fell, but stood up well.

"There's like twenty people swarming around our office. They say they've been reassigned to our working team." He started explaining, to which Alessa turned to look for his uniform jacket that was on the couch. "They have been putting their stuff around; the office is a mess and they don't listen to us, they say they will only respond to you." He continued, following her as she put on her jacket and took a piece of bread from Erwin's hands. Everyone was listening carefully. "We really need you to impose order."

"Alright, calm down." She said as she took some books and gave them to him. He kept them on the bag and waited for her. "What we need is to put them to work, that's all." She took Erwin's coffee and drank from it, and after she left it again on her father's hands she walked towards the door, caressing Levi's hair as she passed by.

"By the way…" She turned to see all of them on the table before leaving. "Can I ask you not to leave before lunch?" She asked Erwin. "I'd really like to talk with you a couple of things." She softened her voice as she talked.

Erwin shrugged and nodded. "Alright; but you cook." She smiled, nodded and left.

Hanji was the next to talk. "She seems to be a mess, but at the same time, she doesn't." She commented, to which Erwin sighed. "She's just different in all means." Erwin corrected.

"Yeah, thanks for helping me to get to you, really thankful here." Levi interfered with sarcasm. He was still standing where Alessa had left him in the middle of the room. Eren sighed and stood up to help him, guiding him towards the table. Levi sat next to Eren and got comfortable as Eren gave him a piece of bread to eat.

"So, what's the story?" Erwin inquired. "Why are you too here?"

Mikasa didn't know what to say since he was a superior and didn't have that much confidence with him that the confidence that Levi had. "You left me alone all day, and did the same with her, considering that it was her birthday, so we came to the tavern." Levi started to explain, sitting with his nonchalant corporal expression. Little by little he was getting more expressive with his body, replacing his eyes. "Besides, since when do I need an excuse to come home?" He added.

Erwin laughed; he was right. "Did you have fun?" Erwin asked to Mikasa.

"Yes, we did."

The morning continued as a very normal one, but with less stuff to do. Levi stayed on the couch trying to stand his headache and caressing the cat, who seemed happy to see him and purred all the time; Hanji asked Erwin if she could take a look on some books, so they both read some of them; and Mikasa stayed with Eren on the same couch than Levi, and talked about the previous night. She told him about the tavern, the stage, the people playing the instruments and Alessa filling the place with her voice, accompanied by Levi on a couple of verses. Eren couldn't believe it; even though he listened half of the story because of being thinking about the book he had read earlier.

"Levi, can I ask you something?" Eren asked to him in a moment in which Mikasa had gone to the kitchen to do something she said but he hadn't listened to her.

"It depends." He replied, still caressing the cat on his lap. "Is it personal? If not, go ahead."

"Do you know what _Il est mort_ means?" He asked.

Levi raised an eyebrow after he heard that. "It means _He's dead_ or _He died_. Where did you take that? Were you intruding into Alessa's books?" He answered and heard how Eren changed his breathing rhythm. "Because if you were, you better keep it secret, or you'll be in serious problems."

"How did you know I did?" Eren questioned.

"Because I read that page too, genius." Levi replied and took the cat on his arms, standing up. "Erwin, can you get me to my room? I'm sick of brats."

Erwin was about to do so when somebody called at the door. "Mr. Smith?" A girl was calling. He opened the door. "Mr. Smith, miss Alessa asked me to give you this." She said as she pulled out a little bag and a piece of paper from her pocket. As soon as Erwin received it and started to read, she left.

_"I think that the mess in my office will take me more time than expected. Please send the boys meanwhile to buy the food for me to cook, so then I won't have to do it on the way home. Read at the back what they need to buy.  
Alessa S."_

After reading, Erwin turned to walk towards Levi and put the bag on his hands, making him leave the cat. "What's this?" Levi asked while Erwin gave the note to Eren. "You two will go shopping. Try to be back soon." He ordered. They both shrugged, Levi sighed and Mikasa volunteered to go too.

Ten minutes later, they were walking down the streets of the market. At the beginning, Mikasa had been the one to lead Levi through the streets and groups of people by holding his hand, but as he constantly complained about how ugly she was doing it by letting him collide with people and trip over everything, Eren was soon leading him, even though Mikasa had commented that they didn't look very manly by holding their hands. Levi didn't seem to mind about that, not as long as Eren guides him well.

They were buying some potatoes when Mikasa got distracted. "Eren, look!" She exclaimed. "There are people playing some music at the square. Let's go and see!"

She appeared to be excited about the idea, but after he looked at the square, Eren didn't share the feeling. "I don't think so." He replied.

"Why not?" She inquired. "I think it'll be fun. Music is spectacular." She tried to convince him; but Eren denied again. Mikasa just shrugged and remained like that as they continued buying the vegetables Alessa had asked for.

"Oh, they're going away. We could have gone and watch." She continued. "Oh, the woman who was directing is walking towards here. Maybe we can ask her if they're playing again on the afternoon…"

Eren looked to where she was looking and again, didn't share Mikasa's excitement. "Don't talk to her, she's a bitch." He whispered to her, without considering that Levi would hear that.

"Why not? Do you know her?" She whispered back to him.

"Yes, I know her. Just don't talk to her."

"Who is she?" Mikasa was asking when said woman walked beside them. She had looked at Eren and Levi with her coldest look and smirked to them.

Levi didn't know who were Mikasa and Eren talking about until the woman talked. "You look horrible, bugger." She had said to him as she passed by. It was Charlotte; and that was enough to get Levi's mood even worse. Eren just ignored her and explained Mikasa that it wasn't a big deal, that they should forget about that.

It took them another fifteen minutes to end the shopping and return to the house, where Levi immediately left the vegetables over the table –with a little of guidance- and asked Hanji to help him to go upstairs. She helped him and, when she went down again, she asked, "What happened? Why is he so angry?"

"Nothing." Said Eren. "It's just that we ran into Charlotte on the market." That was enough for Hanji and Erwin to understand.

Soon Alessa was home and started to prepare lunch, asking for Mikasa's help. She prepared a meat pie with mashed potatoes and a soup of vegetables, which both were extremely delicious. She didn't mind to ask why Levi was so grumpy that night, and nobody worried about the fact that he preferred to eat alone in his room; nobody except Eren. Eren was always worried about him, and the best person he could ask about Levi's behavior was Alessa, he thought.

He approached her while Hanji and Mikasa were washing the dishes and Erwin had gone to prepare some tea, "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure, what is it?" She had nicely replied, smiling as she was getting some books inside a bag, as if she were packing.

"Why does Levi get grumpy every time Charlotte appears near or somebody talks about her?" He asked. "What kind of relationship is there?" Alessa stopped doing what she was doing and stared at Eren with not a very friendly look. Had he gone too far?

"Maybe you should ask that to him instead of me." She avoided answering. "Why do you ask?"

"He won't tell me; he'll get even grumpier." Eren shrugged.

"Of course he will get grumpier; that's part of his private stuff." She inquired. "But what makes you believe he won't tell you?" She added. "In fact, what makes you think that if he won't, I will?" Eren didn't know what to answer. "I know he's unapproachable sometimes, but if you're really part of his daily routine and neither of you has sent the other to go to hell, maybe he's not _that_ unapproachable. Don't you think?" Those words made Eren think about it. Meanwhile, Alessa continued packing her books. "Anyway, if you need a way to get through his grumpiness, just surprise him by behaving in a way you usually wouldn't. That leaves him defenseless."

Hours later, Erwin had ordered them to get ready to come back to Trost, and surprisingly, Alessa was also getting her horse ready, but instead of going with them, she just said good bye. Eren tied Levi's horse to his own, so then he could ride it without the need to guide it, because it'll be following Eren's; and so they did, and even when they practically went back together, none of them said a word. In fact, Eren could notice that Levi's anger was towards him.

Back in the castle, the first thing Levi did was to go towards the stairs intending to get to his room; but Eren caught up with him. "Can you tell me what's wrong with you?" He asked him kindly, to which Levi stopped and turned to speak.

"Even If she's a _bitch_ or not, it's my _mother _you're talking about, so I'd appreciate a little of respect from you, idiot." He snapped to him and followed his way.

"Wait, are you mad about that?" Eren was a bit surprised. "Why are you defending her? Have you forgotten how she treated us or she still treats you? She really is a b-…" He couldn't finish his phrase. Levi had turned back and kicked him.

"Don't you ever dare again, Jaeger." He had said and left. Eren was shocked, so shocked that he couldn't follow him anymore; not because of the pain of the hit, but because of the shock.

He thought of Alessa's words again. _"…if you're really part of his daily routine and neither of you has sent the other to go to hell, maybe he's not that unapproachable._" What did that mean? Was that kick Levi's way to say _go to hell_? Was Levi really approachable? But most importantly, _why did he care so much? Why was he so worried? Why did he want to approach to him so much?_

He went to see Armin instead of thinking too much, and when he arrived, Mikasa was already there. Armin was getting better more quickly now, and maybe for the next day he could get out of bed. They had a great time together. Mikasa told Armin about the Bohemian Sub and this time Eren paid full attention, and then Eren told him about the huge amount of books that Alessa had on her house and all the topics he could read about on the covers. He seemed happy to hear all that.

After they left Armin and were alone, Mikasa gave him another surprise. "Eren, be careful with Levi." She had said and Eren though that she had known about that kick on the stairs he gave him. "Don't let him hold your hand as you did today." She added.

Eren blinked. "Why? Why do you say so?"

"Because I know one of his secrets." She whispered. "When we were all drinking the other day, Alessa said something that got stuck in my head. They didn't notice they had dropped that information, because they were twice as drunk as I was."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Eren, Levi is gay." Mikasa said confidentially, very serious. "He likes men."

"Wait…" Eren widened his eyes. "What?"

Mikasa repeated it, Eren nodded, swallowed and automatically returned to his room. His head had stopped working, stopped thinking properly. That was the most unexpected thing he had heard in his life, but somehow, very good news. How could that be possibly true? He thought of it thoroughly, and couldn't avoid thinking of Alessa's words again. "_What makes you believe he won't tell you...? Maybe he's not that unapproachable…_ S_urprise him by behaving in a way you usually wouldn't". _

He gathered his courage, went to Levi's room, opened the door, came in, closed it and stood there. Levi had started to say something by that time. "Who the hell do you think…?" He was interrupted.

"Are you gay?" He blatantly asked.

"What?" Eren got in response.

"Answer me." He insisted as he approached to him.

"I won't answer such a stupid quest-…" Eren had kissed him by that moment; and if Levi had had eyes, they would be as opened and widened as they could. That was a surprise that he didn't expect or see coming, but surprisingly, he responded to the kiss as he furrowed his eyebrows, annoyed with the surprise.

It wasn't a long kiss, but neither a short one. It had been good for an improvised one. After they kissed, Eren walked away towards the door.

"Can you not tell Mikasa about this?" He asked in a whisper.

"Can you not tell anyone about this?" Levi whispered back. "Now, get lost, brat."

That'd be their little secret for the time being.


	8. Chapter 8

_Hi again! _

_I hope you like this chapter, it's very emotive, I think. It took me less time than I thought it would be because I got stucked on the subway because of a blackout so I wrote it on my cellphone. Then it just took me 10 minutes from my study to check it and upload it. But i have lots of exams starting on Monday and finishing on Friday, so this time it'll take me moooore time. I'm sorry~~_

_I'll let you here the link to the song for this chapter. It's called Niji, from the band L'Arc~en~Ciel and in this time it's a cover performed by magdalene613 (YouTube user). So if the link somehow doesn't work, look for her cover of Niji on YouTube and you'll find it. _

_ .com (/)watch?v=m3Uq0VKjliw_

_You may also notice that I changed the summary c: _

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Chapter 8  
_Hero?_

He remained sitting in the same chair he was when Eren had surprisingly kissed him, and suddenly realized that he was confused. Not because of the fact that Eren had kissed him, but because of the fact that he realized that he'd been too much time suppressing his own feelings and, somehow, Eren's attitude was the straw that broke the camel's back.

He breathed hard, leaning on the chair, raised his feet to the edge of it and hugged his legs. He thought about what had happened; but exactly, _what had happened?_ He didn't know. He just felt exposed; he felt that somehow Eren had gone across all of his masks and barriers. But what was left of his nonchalance and ennui mask? Nothing, really. People from the same legion didn't respect him anymore, and for some others he stopped existing.

He only was what was left of someone who in the past had been a hero. Since he joined the Legion and started to be like a prodigy between the soldiers without even wanting to, people had started to admire him and claim him a hero. A hero who was strong, who had killed more titans than any other soldier of his age, somebody strong enough for not to freak out when having a titan in front of him. A hero that would not cry, not fall, not fail. People started to think of someone so admirable that he couldn't match the description.

His dream wasn't to be a hero; his only will was to fight for those who he had met, for those who had helped him and for those who he cared about. He wanted to protect people, despite social class or in which wall people lived in. He was willing to throw away his life if he was ordered to. But in the end, he started to become that hero that the people were starting to believe in. He knew he wasn't like that, he knew that it was going to be a lie, but he played his part for people to be happy.

He became nonchalant and ennui, two characteristics that helped people to believe the lie. He made the effort to become stronger, strong enough to fulfill people's expectations. _Give the folks a little of hope_, he thought, _hope is what they need in order to have dreams_. He fulfilled his goals, became the strongest and claimed the title; mankind's strongest soldier. Soon or later, he would figure out that he had lost himself into that lie. He had become someone else.

Now he wasn't allowed to fail, he wasn't allowed to fall, he wasn't allowed to lose, he wasn't allowed to feel, and he wasn't allowed to cry. He had learnt to hide his feelings; he had learnt to suppress them. And what did he have in return? Blindness, and now everyone had forgotten him, even himself, who wasn't himself anymore. But after that, the lie remained. He was still acting like the rude guy from the Scouting Legion; he was still full of shit.

How could he inverse that? How could he return seven years ago? But if he had the choice, he would return even further. He would return to those days in which he didn't have to worry about anything. Those days at school, learning to write, to read, to sing. Those days full of dreams, smiles and games; being with his friends, all of them. But Alessa was the only one left alive. He wanted to be a child again, not more than 6 or 7 years old, go back to that age in which his father hadn't died yet and his mother was still taking care of him, acting as if she was a good mother and he was a good son.

He wished to have been a good son. He wished that all the tragedies that followed his father's death hadn't happened, he wished for having had a better life, for having done better things. He wished to have a good reason to live, to burden the suffering. Because that was what was happening at that same moment, he was suffering. He was wishing to have his smile back; he wished to have a bright future. Was he asking too much? He wished to have his eyes back; he desperately wanted to cry, to be able to drop a tear and scream while it goes down.

Indeed, he was asking too much.

What would people think if he would do that? People were still seeing him as a strong man, weren't they? Because he was overcoming his blindness, he was capable of living even with that issue to be solved, because he was solving it. Somehow, he was still not allowed to feel, even though he was tired of that.

.

The day hadn't finished yet. Erwin had gone to Trost to talk with Pixis about some details of the next expedition, and Eren had gone with him. As they were riding their horses through the city's streets, he could notice people's reactions. They were eager to retake the three abandoned cities and didn't care about retaking Shiganshina.

"What's wrong with this people? Don't they understand that's still dangerous to retake those cities?" One of the men of his squad commented.

"Of course they don't, they're not soldiers." Eren replied to him with a soft voice. It was hard for him to think after what he had done. He wasn't expecting Levi to kiss him back, even though that was what he wanted.

The meeting went just well. Pixis had approved everything Erwin had said about the plans and they agreed to start the expedition in one more week. He received the last details on a written report.

The idea was to get a big group of people from the three military groups. The Stationary Troops and the Military Police would both cooperate into a proper building of a wall that could stop titans while the Scouting Legion would take care of titans in Shiganshina, so they don't interfere on the building. Eren's orders were to not use his titan form unless it was really necessary, so he would have to fight with his 3D gear as the others.

They were back at the castle just in time for dinner, and he found the surprise that Alessa's squad was there, along with the twenty people extra she had to deal with. How did he know? Apart for the horses and the people wearing the jacket, he knew it was her because of the smell that was coming from the kitchen. She was cooking again.

Yet that wasn't the only surprise he had. As soon as they got into the castle, they figured out that Levi was on the piano. Not playing it, but more like playing with it. He had half the people gone crazy by just hitting the keys randomly, without playing with any melody or rhythm. He was just messing with people in his own way; and he had also closed and locked the door of the room, so there was no way to get in there. Jean approached Erwin in the kitchen.

"Sir, can I ask for permission to take the door down and tell him to be quiet for a while? He's been doing that all day long since you left." He seemed tired of that. Even Alessa was tired of that.

"Please, and kick his ass too." She commented as she continued preparing Strawberry pies. "He's been a pain in everybody's ass and doesn't even want to say why."

Erwin shrugged, and as for what they could hear in those two minutes, it was indeed annoying. "Ok, here's the key." He gave a punch of keys to Jean and pointed out the one he needed.

He took them and went upstairs, more precisely to the third floor, and opened the door of the room in which Levi was. He was resting his head on the keys of the piano and his right hand beside his head.

"Hey, can you stop doing that for a while, please?" Jean talked to him, leaving to obvious that he was upset about that.

Levi raised an eyebrow and raised his hand from the piano. "Why? Are you pissed off?"

"Well, actually, everybody is." Jean answered.

"Good, then." Levi let his hand fall on the keys, making the piano sound horribly loud.

"Hey! I'm asking you not to do that!" Jean barked. "Stop it! You don't even know how to play that damned thing, _brat_!" He added, emphasizing his last word and imitating Levi's way to say it.

Levi straightened himself and furrowed his eyebrows. "Sit down, Kirstein; I'm going to shut you up."

Levi pulled up his sleeves, put his hands on the piano keys, ready to play, and before Jean could say something and after he had sighed, he started to play. He began with a swirl of high notes, which made Jean's hair stand on end and as he continued, Levi's hands seemed to roll over the keys. The swirl ended with a pair of low notes, as an ever lower register marked the start of the following melody. It felt as if the song was telling a story, one of those sad stories that stab you in the heart; and Levi was putting too much feeling into performing it.

Soon a contrast of two melodies, one rather low-pitched and the other high-pitched, joined to create a spooky atmosphere, not only in the room in which Levi was playing, but also on the ground floor. Those notes were profound, heart-accelerating, and made the perfect match between the jovial sound of the high notes and the steady hand of the lower ones.

Jean glanced at the way Levi was moving to play that music, the way his hands were perfectly moving through the keys, knowing them by heart. He was indeed shut up by his performing, unable to say a word as he listened and watched. He remained speechless even after he had finished. Levi stood up quietly and walked towards the door, leaving Jean alone. Downstairs, everybody had listened to that in a solemn silence, and nobody made a comment when Levi walked through the hall towards the kitchen.

Once there, he was greeted by one of Alessa's caressing hits. "You're annoying." She said.

"Thanks, I tried hard." He replied, received a plate of food and left. She knew he would do that.

They had dinner and a great time during that. Alessa turned out to be a very interesting person because of the never ending topics she had to talk about; but no matter how hard Hanji tried, she didn't talk about Levi or his past. With that, Eren noticed that Alessa was being really careful in not revealing anything about him, even though she seemed to want it; for him, that meant that she had all the answers to all of his questions, but in order to get them, he needed to be smarter.

"Alessa!" He called her, making her stop and turn at the middle of the stairs.

"Need more advice?" She inquired.

Eren swallowed. How did she know? "Uh… Yeah."

"Alright, come with me." Eren followed her to the last floor and to her room, which was next to Erwin's. He suddenly felt that he shouldn't be there. "What is it now?" She asked, without looking at him. She started to pull out the books from her bag. "It's about little brother, isn't it?"

"Well…" Eren hesitated and stopped his words. "…Little brother?"

"Levi." She explained.

"Well, yes. But, you mean little because of height or little because of age?" He answered and asked curiously.

"Both." She laughed. "Ok, what is it? Are you gonna tell me?"

He sighed. "I tried to do what you said…" He started explaining. "But judging on today's behavior, I don't know if it worked or not." He paused. "Have you talked to him, lately?"

"No, I actually haven't." She began to organize the books on a shelf. "I was thinking on approaching him tonight, but I think he's still too much grumpy for that." She explained. "So, what did you do?"

"I was told something about him so I went to ask him if it was true or not… But I would like to confirm his answer with you anyway." He swallowed, thinking that there was no turning back from that conversation.

"He's not a liar, you know… But if you want to confirm, alright." She shrugged.

"He is gay, isn't he?" His words couldn't be more precise.

Alessa turned to see him, surprised by the question. Eren swallowed hard and stare at her with courage. She looked at him more deeply, getting closer to his face and, at the very moment Eren blushed, she moved away. "I knew it! I knew it from the very moment I saw you! You like him!" She inquired cheerfully.

"W-what?! N-no… I was just asking because…" He tried to excuse himself, but she sent him to shut up with a hand gesture.

"Don't lie to me, Jaeger. You have it written all over your face." She laughed hard. "It's the reason I've been helping you out; because I _know_ you're gay and I know he is." He didn't know what to answer. In fact, he didn't say anything else; Alessa had sent him to sleep so he could "_change that charming blushed face to his normal one_" and "_wash it, so anyone could read his crush on Levi_".

The next morning, Levi had locked himself again on the same room, but this time making sure to piss off people by tuning his violin, over and over again; and if not, he would just remain playing badly on purpose. He didn't even wanted to talk to Alessa; he continued asking to be left alone.

"What's wrong with him? He shouldn't be like that for so long…" Alessa had whispered while leaving the castle that morning, meeting Erwin at the front of it, where he had gathered his soldiers and she had gathered hers.

"Attention!" Erwin had called everybody's attention and everybody had offered their hearts. Eren was next to him, at his right, and at his left was his daughter, who had both hands on her back. "As you were informed, from now on the Scouting Legion will work together with both the Military Police and the Stationary Guard. So from now on, you will also respond to two more people's orders: Dot Pixis from the Stationary Guard and Alessa Smith from the Military Police." He pointed at Alessa.

She smiled before she introduced herself. "I'm Alessa Smith, Chief of the Department of Science and Innovation from the Military Police. I'm here in charge of the engineering and building process of Wall Maria's doors, and I'll need your cooperation in order to succeed with the operation." Eren looked at her with admiration.

In person, she was a cheerful, lovely and charming girl, but as she stood up and presented herself, she became a serious, strong and tough woman, at the point that she encouraged the troops in front of her to feel respect towards her. She continued explaining some stuff that he didn't hear; instead, he dedicated to watch other's people reaction towards her.

After some minutes, everybody was sent to their daily duties and, as he didn't have much to do, he thought of talking to Alessa.

"Sorry, dude. I've got a lot of work to do. Didn't you hear what I said before?" Eren shaked his head and she sighed. "We're going to the farming camps; we've got some improving to do there. Why don't you go and talk to little brother while I'm gone? He seems to need some talking… If you know what I mean."

"I don't know what you mean." He inquired.

"God, you're naïve… Good luck with that." She chuckled and left riding her horse together with her squad of twenty four people.

He went to see Levi again. "Levi, open the door." He spent about thirty minutes trying to convince him until he did open the door. "Look, I came to apologize." He started. "I'm sorry about yesterday."

"You jumped into me to kiss me and now you say you're sorry?!" Levi exploded.

"What? No, I mean, I'm sorry about what I said about your mother." He explained.

"Oh…" He sat again in front of the piano and left his violin on his side. "It's ok, then."

Eren glanced at him for a moment and went to sit beside him. "I can notice you're not like… yourself, lately."

"And you recently notice, brat?" He muttered. "I haven't been myself like for... I don't know... A month?"

"Is it because your blindness... Or because something else?" Eren asked softly. "Because I've also noticed that you've been especially lonely these days."

Eren had hit the bulls-eyes. Levi sighed and raised his right hand from his lap to the keyboard, starting to play the main melody from the song of the previous day for a distraction of that conversation. "I don't think you'd understand."

"It doesn't matter if I would or not. I'm still trying, regardless of that." Eren guided his left hand to Levi's back as a supportive gesture. "Tell me what's bothering you." Levi didn't seem to be willing of doing that. "And please don't make me say that it's an order." He added.

Levi remained in silence and, after several minutes, Eren sighed. "I won't ever understand or be able to help you if you keep that to yourself." He continued trying. "I really want to reach you."

"There's no way to reach me; I am so far away." Levi sang to himself as he changed the melody he was playing, one that matched with the verse he sang, knowing that Eren would hear. He did and, of course, got really surprised.

Levi, meanwhile, had his mind over thinking. He was indeed depressed; he had been like that since he got blind and now he was thinking of what he had left to live for. He wished to have something to live for, because as he felt it, he didn't have anything; because when you're blind, the only thing left for you is the darkness and your imagination, and if you're lucky, maybe some memories will still have light and colors. And when you don't have anything real, you're not living anymore. You're just there.

"Eren." He called him, notoriously sad.

"What is it?" There he was, worried again.

"Why did you do _it_?" He asked.

Eren knew what he was talking about, that was why he swallowed and took a moment to think. He was asking about that kiss. "Because I may like you." He said slowly as if he were careful with words. But he wasn't careful enough.

Levi remained in silence for a long time. He continued thinking, but the words were echoing inside his head. _"Because I may like... Because I may… I may…_" That was even worse for his chaos with feelings.

"So, you're still figuring that out." Levi pointed out. "_You're getting into trouble, Eren._" He thought then that maybe he could rely on Eren, that maybe Eren would at least be there for him. He didn't want Alessa, his best friend ever, to help him anymore. He didn't want to tell Hanji a word about himself. He didn't want to rely anymore on Erwin. He didn't want to look for anyone for help. But Eren was there; Eren was trying, really trying to reach him, even though he was completely lost. He considered it, he thought of it, he may give him a chance.

However, Eren wasn't even sure of what he was saying, so all the _maybes_ of Levi remained in that, in only _maybes_. He stood up and walked towards the door, but stopped at it. "Let me know when you're sure of it." He said before leaving.

Eren felt that the world was a little bit bright again. He was waiting for Levi to send him to hell, to kick him, to insult him or something more like… Levi; instead, he had implied that thing _may_ work out from then on.

He took a moment to breath and decide what to do, and finally stood up and followed Levi's steps. He had gone to his room. "Alright, I'm sorry. I didn't put it right." Levi had turned after hearing that. "I do like you." He shrugged, without knowing what he should do next; but he didn't need to do anything but to hug, because Levi had walked towards him and had rested his forehead on his right shoulder. Levi was relieved, he had decided to trust if he had a good sign, and there it was. He wanted to cry.

"Eren, I'm curious about something." He whispered, letting Eren hug him.

"About what?" He asked, curious about his curiousness.

"What did you do with my eyes after removing them?"

"I don't know, ask the doctor." He shrugged.

"You should have saved them…"

"For what?"

"Just to freak people out, Eren. Just to freak people out." Eren couldn't avoid laughing and hugging him more comfortable now, surprised to be hugged back.


	9. Chapter 9

_Alright guys, here's some more.I know I said that I wouldn't update soon, but what can I say? I write this stuff on my cellphone whenever I have the chance - when I'm waiting for the bus, when I'm in the bus, queuing up to buy something, etc etc. _

_Remember that if you want to suggest something -a scene, a song, a word, an expression, whatever- you can do it by leaving a comment. Jaege's Paradise's suggestion is coming on next chapter, so don't be shy and leave yours! I'll answer them as long as I can - Meaning; as long as I have time to use my computer again (It's sad, I know). _

_This chapter was supposed to be pure cute, crazy dialogue, but, well… Just read. _

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Chapter 9  
_Nicotiana_

"Hi, can I come in?" Alessa asked Levi standing from the door of his room. Levi nodded and she reached him on the bed. "We need to talk. Like, seriously, it's a _must do now_." She kind of ordered, taking his hand to sit him in the bed and pull him off the bed. It was night already and Levi hadn't gone to have dinner.

"I don't feel like talking." He answered and notoriously sounded depressed.

"Yeah, I can notice; but I have the perfect solution for that. Come on, I have something for you, my friend." She insisted and carried him on her back. He just let her do that.

Twenty minutes later they were both leaned on Alessa's bed, the door was closed and locked, the window was wide opened and Levi was holding a cigarette on his right hand and slowly blowing the cigarette smoke. The cigarette was poorly improvised with a piece of paper taken from a religious book and some dried Nicotiana leaves turned into dust. Also, because of the heat, they had both taken their upper body clothes off, except for Alessa's breast covering.

"Feel better?" Alessa asked with a soft voice while she received the cigarette from Levi's fingers and watched at how Levi nodded. "I saw this on the farming grounds, so I picked it up and put it to dry on the roof. Nobody found it." She told with a chuckle and smoke from it, blowing the smoke towards the window. "So, tell me, what the hell is happening to you? Let everything out."

Levi sighed. "I don't know where to start." He replied. "Maybe you should ask for more specific stuff…" He received the cigarette again and inhale through the cigarette. Since he hadn't smoke in a long time, he coughed as he blew the smoke.

Alessa didn't hesitate to ask, "Alright. What's up with Eren?" Levi continued coughing and handed over the cigarette to the girl.

"Nothing." He replied, but Alessa elbowed him. "Don't do that." She did it again. "Ah, alright, alright, there may be something; but nothing serious." Alessa sucked the cigarette smiling.

"Explain it all, honey, let it all out." She then gave Levi the cigarette.

"It's not that much as you think." He gave a brief draw to it before continuing talking. "The boy just kissed me. That's it." He shrugged and felt that he was being observed.

"C'mon, we both know that you've got a lot more to say." She insisted and took the cigarette from his hands, letting the ashes fall on the floor. Then she inhaled and gave it back to him. "Besides, the more you keep quiet with this stuff, the more you'll end up suffering. Or you think I can't notice how you're really feeling lately? C'mon, start talking." She ended up ordering.

With any other person, Levi would have entirely denied talking, but Alessa was his friend, she was like a sister; she was all the good things he had ever had on his life, so he couldn't say no to her request, especially knowing that she was worried about him and that she was the most reliable person he had met. "Well, he also asked if I were gay."

"Yeah, I know. He came to me to ask that too." She chuckled. "What did you answer?"

"Nothing, naturally." Levi replied, wrinkling his nose. "He asked and before I could send him to go to hell, he kissed me." He frowned. "It actually took me by surprise; and all of a sudden, he left." He paused. "What did you tell to him?"

"Wow, I should have seen that!" Alessa giggled before answering. "Well, I sent him to wash his face because he had his crush on you written all over it; and I also confirmed his supposition… That boy really likes you."

"I know." Levi sighed and inhaled hard through the cigarette, giving it to her and turned his head left to blow the smoke, so it wouldn't get into her. "He also told me that. He indeed said a punch of cute shitty things, too." He added.

"Now the question is: do you like him?" She continued with the ritual of the cigarette and smoke from it, passing it back, and while doing it, she looked at how Levi shrugged and sighed. "You don't?" She asked; Levi shaked his head.

"I just don't know." He coyly whispered, and before another of Alessa's question arrived, he continued talking. "The only reason for which I have let myself be loved by him it's because I… I really feel quite alone; but I don't like him."

"But sweetheart, you're not alone. I'm always here for you; and so is my father." She tenderly tried to comfort him.

"I know; but if you take you two out of the map… Then, tell me, who's left?" He muttered. "My mother? Those street rats from the capital? None of them would care if I get eaten or killed." His words were rude, cold, but they were the truth; and Alessa could feel the pain coming out of them. "Besides, that shitty brat isn't that bad company after all; and I wouldn't like to continue being an ass by rejecting him. I mean, if he likes me, good then. Let him show it all he wants."

"You sound way too much rational." She pointed out. "You're still being an ass, anyway." She sighed and stood up to go look for some almonds she had. "And I think you'll still be one until you learn to not to suppress your feelings anymore, because as I appreciate it…" She avoided using the verb to see. "You do like that boy, but you just don't admit it… In your heart, I mean."

"So, now, I'm heartless?" He asked complaining, not comfortable about the metaphorical turn of events.

"No." She sat down in the bed again. "Compare it with a book. Let's think of your heart as a book." She took some almonds and put them carefully on Levi's right hand. "When you don't read a book in a long period of time and you conserve it in a very hidden and dusty place, it gets damaged." She leaned on the back of the bed and crossed her legs, getting herself comfortable. "Its pages become yellow and fragile and they start to fall, its ink fades away and its hard cover gets fluffy; and there comes a moment when you want to read it again, but you can't because of the damage. So you need to fix it, but how could you? You need someone expert on restoring books." She patiently explained.

Levi remained leaned on the bed, smoking and eating almonds; and didn't talk until some minutes. "How come that you always end up talking about books?"

"At the end, you're lucky if your book gets restored, but if not, you just have to learn a way to read it. But think about it a little more; maybe Eren really likes to read." She caressed Levi's hair while saying the next words. "Maybe Eren wants to find out the story behind your book. Maybe Eren can restore your book." She smiled. "Maybe Eren is even more human that both of us together, because he really wishes to read you and learn about you… Don't you think?"

After she finished, Eren's words came back to his mind as a thunder. "_I really want to reach you_." Somehow, all that created a sharp pain in his chest. Was that his heart? He ignored it. "I don't think of Eren as an expert on those matters…"

"_Where there's a will, there's a way_, my love." She inquired, leaning to tenderly kiss his forehead. "Besides, we both know that it's not easy for you to show your feelings and, from what I've heard, Eren shows them very easily. I think you'd get along very well." She returned to her comfortable position and stretched, putting her arms behind her head. "What do you think? Are you gonna try, at least?"

"You may be right…" That was his way to say that she was actually very right. "But still, he's just a boy."

"You shouldn't mind about the age difference." Alessa replied. "I have a metaphor, proverb or quotation for whatever you try to use to excuse you from this."

"But he's a minor!" He slightly raised his voice.

"Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. "Alessa said. "Besides, everyone is the age of their heart." Levi sighed, it was predicted that he would lose on that. "C'mon, tell me another reason for not to go on with this and I'll refute it again." She was entertained with the game they had started.

"I don't want to be a burden to bear for him." He whispered, knowing that because of his current position it wouldn't be easy to stand him. He inhaled again from the cigarette, having forgotten that he should share it.

"Oh, he's a good boy, he'll do just fine." Alessa was relaxed about the topic, still waiting for the cigarette to be back on her hands.

"That's the problem; he's too good to be with someone so fucked up and troublesome as me." He argued. "I still have my nightmares and my demons."

"You're wrong again. You need a good boy to help you to be as good as him. Only light can fight darkness, and Eren is full of bright."

"We're getting too much poetical, damn it." Levi complained. "Alright, you win. But tell me, why did you want to win this discussion in the first place?"

"Because I can see that you're not happy as I used to see you many years ago, and I want you to be." She caressed his hair again, softly and tenderly. "And whenever someone is not happy, new things in life are the ones that bring happiness. Even though Eren is actually half-new in your life, it'll be a new adventure to live if you choose to live it. So do it, Levi, do it and at least try it. Otherwise, we'll all lose you; and I really don't want that to happen."

They both remained in silence after that and, as if they were connected somehow, they both raised their hands to hold them softly, not in a romantic way or something similar, but more like two brothers would do in a gesture of support and brotherly love. They had grown up together; they had gone through lots of things together and at that moment, they only wished to continue living and sharing their lives. Maybe not together as a couple; but still, together.

Alessa sighed and softly asked, "So, is that it? Will you try?"

"I guess so." Levi answered, sitting on the bed and leaning on the back of the bed, just as Alessa was. "I'll try. I just hope not to mess things up."

"Good, then I can lay back and relax." She whispered, and took some stuff to prepare another cigarette, assuming that Levi wouldn't give back the one he had and was still smoking. Then they continued talking about other things, laughing at certain stuff, discussing some important issues and sharing each other's opinions regarding this and that, like two all-life friends would do.

But at some point, Alessa sighed and took Levi's hands, holding them. "I have something to confess to you, Levi." She said. "Something important."

"Are you pregnant? Who's the father? Where does he live? I'll kick his ass, right away." He snapped.

"No, Levi!" She scolded him. "It's not that… yet."

"What do you mean by _yet_?"

"Do you remember that guy from my squad? The one that you… Uhm… met, the other day at home." She whispered.

"Yeah, that asshole that follows you all day." He commented.

"Well… He proposed to me today."

That was way too much unexpected. "Did he… what?"

"He proposed to me, even though he knows I don't love him." She explained. "He said that these were good times that we should take the most of them and be happy together."

"Now I get why he's such an asshole with me; he's in love with you. How did he react to your answer?" He said, assuming that she hadn't accepted.

"I said yes. We're getting married as soon as we can."

There was a moment of silence.

"But… You don't love him."

"I know."

"This is when I really want to kick the shit out of you Alessa! Why did you accept to marry him if you don't love him?! After all your shitty talk about happiness, this is what you come up with? You won't be happy that way." He scolded her.

"I know, I know… But I have my reasons, ok?" She defended herself. "Besides, I have to do something with my life. Even though I'm still in love with _you_… At least I have to try to move on."

He always feels terrible whenever he hears those words. They stick strong to his mind and never leave it again. "I'm sorry." He whispered. "I'm sorry I don't love you back…" Levi then felt as if his heart had appeared again in the worst moment to make him feel horrible.

"But, Levi, please, do me a favor and be happy yourself. As long as you're happy, I'll be happy too. It'll be fine." She answered in a whisper and they both hugged each other.

"I'll try. I really will." He answered, hiding his eyeless and bandaged face on her neck. "Have you told Erwin?"

"Not yet, but I will tomorrow… After work." Work, the only word reminded her how late it was in the night. "Work! God damn it, I have to get up early!"

Levi laughed as she stood up quickly and took all the books and stuff from her bed to leave them elsewhere. "Should I go?"

"Unless you'd like to sleep with me."

He chuckled. "I should go, then." He replied and stood up. "Where are my clothes?" She threw them on his face. "Thanks."

Before he left, they hugged again and kissed each other cheek as usual. Levi went straight to his room, which was on the fourth floor, same as Eren's. He had had that room since they had recovered Wall Maria; he deserved to leave the basement. Back on his room, he changed his pants to the ones he used for sleep and got into his bed, just to continue thinking, and in the middle of his thoughts, he wished to play the piano for some minutes. But that would have been very rude from him to play at that time when everybody was sleeping, and he was indeed too lazy to go down another floor to the room where the piano was.

He thought then, why would he play the piano at that hour in the night? And slowly realized that in fact, he wasn't feeling good emotionally and that music was one of the few things that comforted him; that bring him into peace. He thought of Alessa again, of her wish for him to be happy, knowing that whoever he'd chose to be happy with she'd always secretly wish to be that person.

He thought then of Eren; he thought of himself. Then he stopped thinking; he just stood up and walked, and didn't stop until he was indeed in front of Eren's bed.

"Eren." He called him.

Eren slowly woke up and looked at him in the darkness of the night, slightly illuminated by the light of the moon getting through the slightest spaces between the closed window. "Levi? What are you doing here? Did something happen?" He asked, slightly confused.

"There's something I need to say."

"What is it?" Eren sat on the bed.

"I may like you, as well." He started. "That's how it is; I _may_ like you, I still don't know if I really do. It's not because I haven't decided yet, it's that I don't know what I feel. I've been like this for seven years so far, and I can't actually assure you that it'll stop being like this in one or two months. It actually may not stop and I'll be like this forever, I don't know. That's because I don't show my feelings, because I don't know that I have them 'cause they're too hidden for me to understand them; that's what makes me an asshole and a terrible human being." He sighed. "So, do I still like you?" There was a long awkward silence after Levi's words.

"All you said…" Eren started to talk very, very slowly, killing Levi's nervous system while doing so. "Just made me like you even more."

"Good, then." Following his words, Levi sat on the bed and raised his feet to it, getting comfortable and covering himself with the blankets. Eren, who wasn't expecting for that –or any of the things that Levi had done or said since he opened the door of his room-, looked at him surprised.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm sleeping with you tonight, isn't it obvious? Now shut the fuck up and go back to sleep, shitty brat." He leaned on his side, facing him. Eren, meanwhile, looked at how he was getting comfortable and thought of doing the same, passing one arm over him to hug him. "Don't." Levi stopped him verbally, and Eren got his arm back to a safe place.

"What's the point of sleeping with me but not letting me-"

"Shut up, I said." And this time was Levi who passed an arm over Eren's waist, hugging him. Eren sighed and tried to go back to sleep, giving thanks to any God that could be there somewhere for the fact that Levi couldn't see how much he had blushed because of that hug; and then feeling horrible for having given thanks for that. By the morning, though, Eren was the first to wake up, noticing that there was someone calling at his door. He couldn't react when the door was opened; he just froze during those seconds when he still didn't know who it was. But thankfully it was Alessa.

"Hey Eren I came to tell you..." She stopped at the moment she saw them together at the same bed and remained looking at them until Eren blushed. "God, you're fast. I wasn't expecting this." She commented.

"Me neither; I didn't plan this." He replied. "It just happened; he came here by surprise last night."

"Oh, that's even better." She chuckled. "Well, I came to give you good news."

"What good news?"

"The first one is that you won't be going to the mission in Wall Maria because your titan won't be needed and most of the soldiers still are afraid of you. But don't worry, that's good because you'll be taking care of Levi while we're gone so... Good luck!" She quickly said and left. That was another unexpected thing to happen.

"Hey, wait!" He jumped out of bed and went after her, without caring that he wasn't wearing decent clothes but the ones he used for sleeping. He followed her running down the stairs, just because he was running from him and he couldn't reach her until she met Erwin at the entrance of the castle. "Hey, what was all that about me not going with you?" He asked; she smiled as if she had played a trick and Erwin rolled his eyes.

"I'm sorry Eren, most of the soldiers from the Stationary Guards and the Military Police are still afraid of you. They formally requested your suspension for this mission and the superiors accepted." He explained and gave him a piece of paper with the report. "It just arrived. There's nothing to do about it." He put a hand on Eren's shoulder and left.

Eren read it quickly. "_Due to the formal request presented by Kitz Weilman from the Stationary Guards along with Alessa Smith from the Military Police, it has been decided that the Corporal Eren Jaeger from the Scouting Legion will be detached from his attendance to the following missions regarding re-building of Wall Maria's inner door."_ It was signed by Zacklay.

For a moment, Eren wanted to shrink Alessa's neck with his hands, but before he could at least imagine that, she approached from behind and put both hands on his shoulders. He realized that she had done exactly the same Erwin had asked him who was the real enemy, months back when Sawny and Bean were killed. "It's just a favor, ok? Don't take it personal. You wouldn't be allowed to use your titan form and your abilities with the gear aren't _that_ good or necessary either." She explained rapidly whispering. "Besides, I have another surprise for you." She secretly put something on Eren's shirt pocket. "Take Levi to Sina, stay in our house, get to know him and let him know _you_. But don't try to do much, just… K.I.S.S."

"Just… What?"

"K.I.S.S." She laughed. "Keep it stupidly simple. Just kiss." She patted his head and intended to leave, but he stopped her.

"Wait… What does that mean? You prepared all this?" He asked, still angry, but concerned at the same time. "Why are you doing this?"

"If I don't do this… Who else would try to help Levi or to help you? Humanity has become selfish and cruel; but we haven't, the three of us. We're different in our own ways and that's what unites us. But we're always under the risk to be drawn by humanity and become one of them." She sighed. "Don't lose him; make him happy. That's all I'm asking."

After she finished, she grinned softly, patted his head again and left. He shrugged and turned to go back to his room, putting his hand on the pocket where she had left something; she somehow was right. It was a key, surely the key of the house, and a little note. "Bohemian Sub." He muttered as he entered to his own room, closing the door behind me. That was the place Mikasa had told him about.

"What?" Levi lazily asked, covering himself with the blankets a little more.

"Nothing." He answered. "Get up, we're leaving." He added.

"Leaving where?"

"Home, I guess." He said. "I'm not going to Maria anymore, so I'm staying with you; also, Alessa gave me the key of the house in Hermiha. Maybe it's less boring to be there than here." Eren approached him and rested his elbows on the edge of the bed, deliberately kissing him without prior notice. Levi, meanwhile, frowned and wrinkled his nose, annoyed by the surprise, but pleased with it after all.

"Are you sure you want to stay with me?" Levi sadly whispered.

Eren smiled. "Get up, s_leepy brat_, we have to go."

"Hey, that's my phrase. Don't steal it." Levi groaned as he raised a hand to squeeze one of Eren's cheeks and kiss him.

* * *

_Thanks for reading! By the way, Alessa's phrase about age was a quotation from Leroy "Satchel" Paige. See you!_


	10. Chapter 10

_Well, I'm gonna be honest and tell you that I had a HORRIBLE week. If my dear friend whose name I won't tell hadn't helped me, I wouldn't have made it to the end of the week. A lot of bad things happened, the worst one being that I have a terrible cold, buuuuuut something good happened between all the bad things~! Well, my dear friend whose name I won't tell lent me her CD of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, so I've been very keen on using it (Yeah, that's why this is the longer chapter until now). _

_So, I hope you enjoy reading this and leave your comments below!_

_By the way, I almost forgot to mention that the song of thic chapter is (you may already know it) Vogel im Kafig, from SnK OST. Enjoy~_

* * *

Chapter 10  
Company

The morning had been surprisingly calm; people were focused on their own duties and getting ready for the mission. Before they had gone, Eren went to speak to Mikasa to let her know that he wasn't going and, due to that, she was in charge of the team. When he returned to see Levi at the entrance of the castle, Alessa was trying to hug him, but he wasn't letting her. She was saying good bye in her own way, though they were going to stay at least two weeks long out in Maria. She said some stuff in French to Levi, patted Eren's head, rode her horse and left. Eren watched as the troops were leaving towards Karanese, as usual.

The formation was the same Erwin had applied to the Scouting Legion, but this time it included the Stationary Guards and The Military Police. The Scouting Legion's squads were on the front and second line, from left to right. Behind the first four squads at the centre there was Erwin's, with Mikasa's on his right and Hanji's on his left. Behind Erwin's squad was Alessa's, with her two other teams behind in a line, protected by the rest of the formation consisting of the Stationary Guards. Everybody thought that having the Military Police protected at the centre was stupid, this based on the fact that they were supposed to be the bests from the bests of every generation of recruits and on that there were no titans inside Wall Maria anymore; but Alessa well knew that after so many days, the provisional walls could have been pulled down by the titans and that her teams hadn't ever fight with a titan and that they were people devoted to either academic or social work; thus their job there was to be engineers more than soldiers, and nothing else.

They made it to Karanese before midday, had lunch and continued traveling towards Shiganshina, now at a slower speed than before. After some minutes, Alessa approached Erwin together from two soldiers from her team. "I'm going to go ahead; we need to gain some time with the drawing of the plans." She announced to him.

"It's dangerous. We first have to confirm that it's safe to stay near the Wall." Her father answered, but her intentions hadn't changed with those words.

"Then I'll go ahead and confirm that for you. If it's safe, I'll shoot a green smoke round, and if it's not, a red one; and then the decision on what to do will be yours." She smiled cheerily and urged her horse into a gallop, being instantly followed by the people of her squad. Erwin sighed; he had surrendered to her daughter's stubbornness years ago. They could see how she overtook the squads of the front line and quickly disappeared on the distance.

·

Not too much after the soldiers had left the headquarters, Eren was also ready to leave. He had prepared a bag with clothes –the very few he had– and tied it to a side of the horse. They were using Levi's gray mare for the trip since he had complained that "_his poor little girl had been abandoned on the stables for weeks and nobody had taken care of her, so she deserved to at least be noticed_", so Eren had no option on that matter. Once he had finished, he went to the third floor to look for Levi. "Are you ready?"

"I've been ready all the morning, brat." Levi answered briskly, without stopping playing the piano. He was focused more on that than on replying.

"But you haven't packed any clothes or anything." Eren inquired, walking towards him to sit by his side in front of the instrument, which he found was magnificent.

"We're going to my home, you idiot. I've got plenty of clothes and stuff there." Levi stopped, just to sharply tap Eren's head with his right hand. Eren chuckled with no apparent reason and told Levi to go.

The trip was slow since Eren didn't really want to go fast because there was no need to hurry. He instead preferred to take his time to enjoy those moments, either by admiring nature or by enjoying those moments in which Levi clung to him because of the horse movements. That was actually what he wanted to happen from the beginning and was the reason why he decided to use one horse only, just to sit Levi behind him and hope for him to hug. Thank God Levi hadn't complained about that.

Eren's eyes were on the road. Since he had become a soldier, he hadn't had an opportunity like the one he had at that moment, which was the change to notice how beautiful the landscape was. Maybe it was because he had never paid attention to it, or maybe because since Levi had lost his eyes, he was starting to appreciate to have his own still on their place, and so he used them more. Either way, nature seemed awe-inspiring and breath-taking. The trees surrounding the road made the perfect ceiling to stop the burning sun of spring and created the perfect filters for it to go through the leaves of the trees. Suddenly, he was surprised by one of Levi's hands on his cheek.

"What are you looking at, brat?" He mumbled. "I know by the position of your face that you're looking at something. Tell me what it is."

"It's nothing." Eren answered, looking back to the road and leaving behind the sunlight getting through the trees.

"If you really want to stay with me, you have to be my eyes. Tell me." He insisted, removing his hand from Eren's cheek.

Eren sighed because of the heartache the whole situation provoked on him. "I was just watching as the light goes down through the trees." He answered.

"Describe it." Levi whispered in request as he rested his face on Eren's back. "Describe to me whatever you see."

If he was already noticing lots of details before, now he embraced himself in noticing even more of them. The nature by the road was quiet and peaceful, sometimes surprising them with a squirrel on a tree or a butterfly flying around some flowers and described every little detail; the spring sun warming the ground, the birds hidden in the trees, some nest in the branch of trees. "To sum up, it's quite a beautiful day, isn't it?" Levi interrupted him at some point with a soft voice.

Eren smiled chuffed. "Yes, it is a beautiful day indeed." He said back, announcing then that they were about to get to Sina, and after some minutes, he wondered, "Levi, why did you suddenly ask for me to describe that much?"

"You're my guide, aren't you? I'm training you." He joked and smirked; Eren just rolled his eyes. But the truth was that Levi really was missing the look of a landscape.

Once on the house, Eren followed Levi with his eyes as he got in and left himself fall on the couch. "_He knows where that is, at least._" He though and carried his bag of clothes inside. "Levi." He called his attention. "Where can I keep my clothes?" He asked.

"I don't know; you've just came out of the closet, maybe you should keep them there." He joked and laughed, getting himself comfortable.

"Ha-ha, very funny. Now tell me where." Eren shrugged as he waited for a reply.

"I don't know. Where are you going to sleep?" He inquired.

Eren, meanwhile, had a moment of insecurity. What did that mean? Was he implying that they wouldn't sleep together again? Or was he implying that in fact they would? Was that a trap or just a plane question? After thinking all that, he didn't think what he said, anyway. "Well, I'm sleeping with you."

Levi pulled his feet up on the couch and put his hands behind his head. "Then, guess where you have to put your stuff." He didn't seem bothered about the answer he received.

"You mean, in your room?"

"My, you really are a genius." Somehow he felt very pleased to hear Levi's sarcasm, since he hadn't talked like that in a lot of days and was starting to miss it.

He guided his steps towards the second floor and then to Levi's room. The first time he went in that room he hadn't pay attention to it; in fact, he had just gone to sleep. But now he did, and found that it was quite cozy. The bed was immediately by the wall in front of the door, with the headboard of it to the wall on the right. Beside it there was a little night table without anything on it and, at the legs of the bed, there was an old wooden trunk covered by a small blanket. He wondered what was inside of it and, as he entered the room, he inspected the rest of it. By the wall at the left there was a bureau, and between that and the trunk, a chair. On top of the bureau there was a little shelter with books on it.

Finally, next to the door of the room there was a closet, where Eren went towards to see if he could leave his clothes there and, after he opened the door of it, he could see that in fact, Levi had a lot of clothing there, so much that he didn't know where to put his stuff. He decided to throw his bag of clothes next to some shoes on the floor of the closet and turned to leave, but something on the bureau called his attention. When he got close to it, he found a little metal box with a glass on the front that contained a picture; it was a daguerreotype. The picture showed three people; a fresh-faced man that had an expression of having lived lots of experience dressing the jacket of the Scouting Legion, a very young woman who seemed to be not more than twenty years and was wearing a wonderful dress and who was also carrying a little boy on his arms.

It took him some minutes to recognize Charlotte on the picture, having the same cold eyes expression she had nowadays; and after he realized he knew the woman, his eyes switched to the little Levi that was on her arms. It was a total change. He had a soft smile and widened and bright eyes, long hair and fine clothes; and now that he was looking with more detail, he had the same eyes of the man beside them. Even so, they had the same face shape and nose. He was notoriously his father. Eren looked at the picture being a little nostalgic, remembering now his own father and mother and his childhood and, for a moment, wondered how Levi's childhood had been like.

He remembered that Levi was downstairs, alone, and that he was taking too much time with delivering a bag. He quickly left the room and went back down, finding Levi exactly where he was when he left him alone. "What took you so long, Jaeger? Did you get lost?" He mocked.

"No, I was just accommodating my clothes. Nice closet, by the way." He answered, without paying attention to his comments too much.

"You were intruding into my closet?!" He sounded bothered about that.

"Yep, just as you were joking about mine before." He took sit on the little spot Levi wasn't using at the couch, though his legs didn't cover it at all.

"You little bastard." He complained, sighing. "Hey, don't sit, lad, you have to prepare lunch."

God, he had forgotten about that detail. "Lunch? What do you want for lunch?" He asked as if he hadn't forgotten to bring food.

"Whatever you can prepare without burning the house." Eren couldn't avoid laughing himself at that. "Alright." He answered.

It didn't take him too much time to go buying some vegetables and come back to prepare them. He just prepared some salad, accompanied by some fish; and after eating, Levi complained that it was too little and it wasn't good, but Eren didn't pay attention to that.

"Where are you going?" Eren asked to Levi. He was taking the dishes to the kitchen when saw Levi going to the stairs.

"I'm going to sleep." He announced.

"But it's no more than two p.m." Eren protested.

"I can't see what time it is and I also really don't mind what fucking time it is. I want to sleep, alright?" He grunted back and started to go up the stairs, very slowly though. He still wasn't comfortable with that environment.

"So, you're leaving me here all alone?"

"Yeah, I am."

Eren sighed, shrugged and went to the kitchen to wash the dishes. Now back to the living room, he thought of going out to have a walk, or maybe going to that place called Bohemian Sub, but he thought that maybe leaving Levi alone wasn't very good idea. What if he wakes up and doesn't find him? What if he falls down the stairs? What if he needs some help? Better to stay in the house. What to do, then? He finally decided to take a book from Alessa's messy collection of books and sit on the couch to read; but he got bored quickly, since chemistry was boring, and for a moment, he wondered what were the other people from the Scouting be doing by that time.

·

They soon saw the green smoke round at the distance, which made Erwin stop worrying about his daughter and made him go into a faster gallop. When they reached the Wall, they found out that Alessa's working team was already working on drawing some plans for the building process; and as they were all discussing and speaking with numbers, nobody dared to interrupt them. Erwin, instead, sent the troops up to the wall to keep an eye on the titans, just to make sure they wouldn't get too crazy when they notice that amount of people paddling around. Also, Pixis sent his troops to do maintenance to the cannons.

After several hours, the first orders from the Science and Innovation Department had been dictated and the soldiers from all the military branches started to work on that. They had to first, clean up the mess on the gash of the wall and, most importantly, prepare the tents, because they were staying there for a long time.

.

And for a long time Eren stayed on the living room, thinking of what to do next and acknowledging that there wasn't too much to do. He wished for Levi at least being awake, maybe not sharing or doing something with him, but at least he wished that he was there, just to hear him say something unpleasant and to feel pleased to hear him, even though that was indeed very weird. He then thought of Alessa's words; keep it stupidly simple. That was a hieroglyphic to him. Was even possible to keep things simple with Levi, who had a very complex personality?

He tried to imagine the moment after lunch in a simpler way; but couldn't. Was there a simpler way to tell him not to sleep at that time? He sighed and closed his eyes, and at the moment he did, he realized of something. Maybe the clue wasn't to make things simpler, but to let them be simpler; maybe his words shouldn't have been a reprimand, maybe he should have said "_Ok, go to sleep_" because he knew, he truly knew that that wasn't what Levi would have expected. "That's it. Keep it stupidly simple; surprise him by behaving in a way you usually wouldn't." He mumbled before standing up.

He went upstairs and quietly opened the door of the room. Levi was resting on his right side on the bed, facing the wall and completely covered by the blankets of the bed. The black cat was also walking and purring around the bed, looking for a comfortable place to lie down and, when he approached to them, the feline started meowing. "Ssh, you're going to wake him up." Eren whispered to the cat and caressed him. He then took out his boots and jacket, along with the many belts of the uniform, and carefully pulled up the blankets to get into the bed. Levi didn't notice his presence or either when Eren got close and hugged him by his waist.

He closed his eyes trying to fall asleep, but as he couldn't, he remained with his eyes closed for a long time, wondering at what point Levi would discover that he'd joined him on the bed. However, when he opened his eyes again, knowing that he wouldn't fall asleep because he wasn't even close to be sleepy, he noticed that there was no sunlight anymore, which meant that they should have been there for at least three or four hours. He paid attention to Levi's breathing and, judging by it, he was still asleep. He sighed, bored, but then, Levi surprisingly -and unconsciously- turned on the bed to face Eren and hugged back, softly groaning as if he were complaining about something.

Eren remained extremely quiet for a while, waiting to see if Levi would make any other move, but didn't. After the panicking, anyway, Eren thought that that had been actually extremely cute and also, it had been reason enough to make him blush. Now that they were facing and their bodies were practically stuck to each other's, he now hugged Levi feeling more comfortable doing so, but this time he reacted to that. "Get on you back." He mumbled, pushing Eren to make him lean on his back and get comfortable himself by resting his head on Eren's chest and moving a leg over Eren's legs. Again, Eren's face was reddish and Levi's breathing remained calm. He was still asleep.

This time, Eren stayed with his eyes open, looking at the ceiling and reaching one of his hands to softly squeeze it and hold it and slowly realized that he could feel Levi's heart beating because of their proximity; and because of that, he had the crazy thought that Levi was comfortable with his presence and not only by using him as a pillow, because otherwise, Levi wouldn't have told him to stay in that position, would he? Or even, he wouldn't have accepted to go and be there with him, would he? And after all, who would have thought that the way to reach him was as simply as to keep him company? He curved a silly smile and wished to stay like that forever; but he was asking too much.

All of a sudden, he felt that Levi's heart beating speeded up, same as his breathing. He could even notice that he had frowned, squeezed Eren's hand and was slightly moving and trying to get comfortable again. "Levi?" He called him, worried –as usual-. He didn't respond. "Levi?" He called again, raising his voice a little, but he didn't respond again. This time, Eren tried to move him, which ended up with Levi slightly jumping in surprise. "Are you alright? You were having a nightmare." Eren whispered.

Levi tried to calm his heavy breathing and went back to rest his head on Eren chest. "It was just a memory…" He whispered. "A bad memory." He clarified after some second, swallowed and let Eren circle his waist in a hug.

"Wanna tell me about it?" Eren's voice was supportive, non-judging, and Levi could feel that.

"Not really." He replied in a whisper.

"Was it about Charlotte?" Eren asked after having waited some minutes, without really expecting an answer.

Levi took a deep breath and answered. "Yeah."

"Still without wanting to talk about it?"

"You know what I really want to say?" Levi raised his voice and head as if he were now looking at Eren's face. "I'm hungry, Eren. Do something." He kind of ordered and Eren just chuckled.

Sadly, if he wanted to feed his beloved Levi, he had to leave that comfortable and lovely proximity and go downstairs to prepare something and, given the circumstances, he decided to spoil the former corporal a little bit. He prepared a coffee, spread some jam on some toasts and went back upstairs with everything on a tray. Of course, he then would have to clean up the bed because of the bread's crumb, but he didn't mind. In fact, he cleaned everything –even washed the dishes- with a widened smile on his face. His crush on Levi was making him way too happy for being bothered by such details and his only worrying was completely Levi, nothing else. Even defeating titans had been moved to second priority. Levi was first.

"Are you getting back to sleep?" Eren asked softly, sitting on the bed again.

"Yeah, I still have that fucking headache." Levi answered, leaning on his side and facing the wall as usual. Eren did as he did and hugged him by his waist, finding the surprise that Levi received his hand and held it gently.

"Good night." Eren whispered.

"Yeah, that." Was Levi's answer.

·

That same afternoon by the surrounding of Wall Maria, Alessa's squad had finished preparing the plans for the building process and now was sitting around a table. From her position, the squad leader could watch the movements of all the soldiers; those who were preparing the camp, those who were cleaning the area and those from the Scouting Legion who were just standing on guard with the _just in case_ procedure.

"I think that they're so useless now…" Commented one of the girls from the squad.

"Don't say such things, Rocio. Their mission is to protect us in case there's an emergency." Alessa corrected with gentle words, without stop looking around.

"You say that because your father's the commander, otherwise you wouldn't appreciate them that much. We can manage emergencies very well without their help." The girl added, which made Alessa look at her with a disapproval glance.

"Really? Hoy many titans have you killed?" The blue-eyed girl asked, knowing that the answer was zero. "Have you in fact ever faced one?" Silence. "Stop talking nonsense and go help the Garrison to clean the area." She ordered, watching as the girl stood up and left.

"When are you going to replace her?" Another member of the squad asked.

"I don't know, as soon as I find someone suitable for the team." Alessa sighed; looking around again and suddenly being surprised by two soldiers who took sit one at each side of her.

"Hi! How have you been?" Those were Mikasa's greeting words. "What's new? You didn't mention before you had such a high rank in the Military Police. By the way, this is my friend Armin. Armin, talk to her. Well, it was good to see you again, girl. Bye!" She commented and left as Alessa looked at her while raising her eyebrows.

"Now that was odd…" Alessa whispered, looking back to the blonde boy sitting next to her that was actually nervous like hell. "Armin, right?" The boy nodded. "You look like you need something." Armin nodded again, shrugging. "Want to talk in private?" After Armin had nodded by the third time, Alessa looked back to her team mates. They knew they had to leave them with no need for words. Once they were both alone, she talked again. "So, Armin, who are you and what do you need?"

"I'm Armin Arlert, sir, and I was wondering if you would accept to barter a book with me." He said kindly, leaving a little book on the table. She looked at it; it was a collection of different poems from different authors, much of them she had already read them.

"Barter, you say?" She was slightly interested. "I suppose you offer this one, but what's the book you want?" She questioned.

"Any of the ones you have." He shrugged. "You see, Mikasa and Eren told me you have a really big collection of books, so…"

"Are you one of Eren's friends?" She grinned.

"Yeah, we're best friends since we were children." Armin answered and, after he did, Alessa surprisingly caressed his hair.

"Well, in that case, sweetheart, you can take any of my books whenever you want to read any, provided that you give them back after you've read them. I'll trust you'll take good care of them. You seem to be a good boy." She chuckled at the time she saw the teenager's surprised face. "But there's a condition: no reading while being on a mission." She added.

"Really? B-but…" Armin stood up cheerily, attempting to hug her, but stopped himself. "You really are as amazing as they said! Thank you!"

"You're welcome, Armin; now, go back to work before someone scolds you." She then looked at how the boy went back to his position with a widened smile on his face and, after some minutes, she noticed that he'd forgotten his book on the table. "I'll bring it back later." She thought, with her mind too busy to lose any other minute looking at where her father was. She was waiting for an opportunity to talk to him and finally announce that she was getting married. She knew it wouldn't be easy, but she intended anyway to tell him before that same night.

·

"Levi, you're hurting me…" Eren moaned softly. "Could you let go my arm?"

"Sorry." He didn't let go his arm. "But I don't see any other option."

"Very funny, now let me go." Eren insisted.

"No, I won't. You're such a cry-baby…" Levi in fact clung even more to Eren's arm, staying closer.

Eren sighed, rolled his eyes and continued walking by the crowded streets of the city. They had been holding hands for a while, but as the streets were more and more crowded by every minute, people started to collide with Levi every time, so he clung to Eren's arm to avoid people collide with him. It was still early in the morning, and as they didn't have any hurry, they hadn't bothered to start buying food for lunch yet. Instead, Eren decided to take a walk so he could tour around the city and know more places on it.

They ended up on the main square, where there was a kind of ceremony or public event going on. Whatever the case, Eren wasn't sure what it was; but something he was certain about was that Charlotte was there. At the moment they arrived, a man had finished talking in front of a podium and left it to sit in front of a mounted stage where there was an orchestra of about thirty people. Eren had the hope that Levi wouldn't notice her presence.

"What's happening? Why are so many people here?" Levi asked to Eren's surprise. Sometimes he still forgets that Levi can't see.

"An orchestra is going to play something. Do you want to stay?"

They stayed, standing at the back of the crowd of people who were attending whatever the event was. They both leaned on a tree, one beside the other and, as Levi remained holding Eren's hand, Eren couldn't move his eyes from the stage. There was a cute little girl of no more than 14 years old looking at the people with a nervous glance. She looked as if she were about to faint; but hopefully, before she did, Charlotte stood up from her sit at the first line and called her. He observed them while they talked to each other, where the little girls shaked her head in denial on numerous occasions. Finally, Charlotte put a hand on one of the girl's shoulders and walked by her, going up the stairs to the stage.

She stood exactly where the girl was before. "The next song was completely written by my students and therefore supposed to be performed by them. However, due to an unexpected illness of the main singer, I will momentarily replace her."

Levi squeezed Eren's hand to call his attention. "Was that my mother?"

"I was hoping for you not to recognize her." Eren sighed. "Shall we better go somewhere else?"

"Is she about to sing?" With those words, Eren looked back at the stage. Charlotte was waiting for the orchestra to be ready.

"I suppose so." Eren replied.

"Are you kidding? We're not going anywhere." Levi stated.

Soon, the women from the percussion instruments began to sing, accompanied in the background by some stringed and woodwind instruments which Eren didn't recognize. The only ones he knew were the violins, but they hadn't start playing yet. The women's voices felt like a chorus of angels, and Charlotte's versatile and mezzo-soprano voice surprised him even more. She was standing still, sticking out her chest as her voice started to stand out between the voices of the chorus and the sound of the instruments.

Past a minute from the begging, Charlotte started to pitch her voice higher and higher, going then slowly down until the lyrics stopped and, after some high notes, the song turned from angelic and beautiful to a more spooky and creepy ambient. Eren's hairs stood on end during the violins playing at the background, but he calmed down after that part, continuing admiring the magnificent of the music and -thought he didn't want to admit it- Charlotte's voice. After six minutes the song finished with some percussion and immediately after, the crowd burst into applause.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Levi's words brought h back from his thoughts, but immediately made him continue thinking.

He looked at her, slightly bowing to the people who were still applauding; and slowly walked to one of the sides of the stage, raising her arm to point at the boys, girls men and women from the orchestra that she'd taught to play herself. He then realized that she was indeed beautiful; she was kind of a dainty petite doll with a shapely and svelte waist, long and straight dark hair with the same fringe as Levi, but longer by the right side of her hair. He also notices that the way she moved was clumsy, yet elegant. She had glazed and penetrating gray eyes -similar to the eyes Levi had-, an aquiline nose, thin rose lips, small hands and she also could sing like a goddess. But regardless of her appearance, what was that detail that she had for which Levi would respect her that much at the point of defending her from people who would speak badly about her, even when the things said were the truth? He was suddenly jealous of her.

They heard two more performances or the orchestra while Charlotte directed them before they left; they still had to buy some food for lunch, but that took them less than twenty minutes. Back in the house, Levi stayed on the kitchen making company to Eren, who was preparing lunch: smashed potatoes with some vegetables. He was cutting the vegetables when Levi broke the silence.

"You've been quiet for a while, brat." Brat: that was interesting. Most of the times when Levi had said that to him, it had been with an implicit tone of sarcasm, irony or anger. However, this time it had been completely opposite; Levi had ended his sentence with a completely different way of saying it. In fact, he'd said it in a way a person says _honey_ or _sweetheart_ to the other one. But Levi was unique; his affective word was brat.

"Do you want me to say something?" He replied, still focused on his task.

"No…" Levi whispered. "It's just that…" He stopped, shaking his head. "Never mind."

"Mankind's stronger soldier has insecurity issues today?" Eren joked, looking at him out of the corner of his eye.

"Don't make fun of me, Jaeger." He barked back. "I'm used to your constant questioning, that's all."

"You want me to ask questions then?" Levi didn't answer. Eren, meanwhile, thought that he was taking his time to think what to say; but after several minutes Levi was still in silence. "If you don't tell me not to ask things, I've got to say I'm really curious about something." He added to his previous words.

"Alright, ask about it."

Eren turned his head to see Levi. He was sitting on a chair at the entrance of the kitchen, but now that he as paying attention to him, he wasn't in the same position. In what minute he had raised his feet to the chair and hugged them? "Is it true that you were a thug and participated in underground crime before becoming a soldier?" He asked, waiting to see any reaction on Levi. "If it's true, how did you end up doing that?"

He could see a nervous tic on one of his eyebrows, containing himself to tell him to go to hell, but after some sighs and a gesture of giving up, he replied. "Yeah, it's true." He answered. "My mother abandoned me in the capital after my father died, and I ended up stealing to eat, but things got unbelievable worse."

Eren, who was still cutting the vegetables for lunch, got so irritated in one second that immediately reacted to move down abruptly the knife and accidentally cut a little bit of one of his fingers. "She did what?" Levi didn't repeat it. Eren looked back at the kitchen inn where he was cutting the lettuce and realized that he'd cut himself. "How old were you?" He whispered, trying to hold the anger.

He watched at how Levi sighed, shrugged and rested his jaw on his knees. "Seven." Eren swallowed hard. How could a mother abandon her seven-year-old child on a foreign city?! He looked at how the cut had already healed and strongly clenched his fist.

"And nobody went looking after you?" He asked.

"No."

"What about Alessa and Erwin!?" Eren emotionally exploded, yelling having lost control and clenching his fist so hard that he was hurting himself, but also immediately healing and steaming because of that process.

"Charlotte had told them I was dead; that I had been killed during the trip back home." Levi stammered. Then Eren realized that Levi wasn't fine. He'd answered too many questions; questions that he may haven't answered to too many people before. That was a delicate topic after all.

Finally, Eren got himself under control again and approached Levi to hug him, who immediately hugged tightly back, but without losing his position on the chair. "Now I understand why you hate such a wom-…"

"I don't hate her." Levi intervened.

"But…" Eren blinked in surprise, out of his anger now. "You said that weeks ago, when we got back from an expedition. Besides… She's really been mean to you!"

"I know I said that… But that was at that moment." He replied, taking some time to think what to say next. "I mean… I know I have lots of reasons to hate her; and I've really tried to do it, but at the end, I just realize that I love her." He explained. "She's my mother after all. I love her; there's nothing to do about it. A mother's always a mother."

"That's very human of you." Eren whispered back. "I really admire you…"

"Thank you." Levi whispered. "Thank you for staying with me…"

"I'll always be with and for you, Levi." Suddenly, Levi stopped hugging him and stood up, surrounding now Eren's neck with his arms and resting his head on his chest. Eren cuddled him, thinking that he should better change the topic. "Can I ask one more thing?" He said and didn't wait for an answer. "Would you teach me to play the piano?"

Levi moved his head a little, surprised by such a request. "There's no piano in this house."

"We can look for one." He said. "Maybe we could go to the Bohemian Sub after lunch." He proposed and admired how Levi slowly smiled at that.

"Then what are you waiting to finish preparing lunch?" They both chuckled and, before he would continue with the vegetables, he stole a kiss from Levi's lips.


	11. Chapter 11

_Hiiiiii! I'm so so so so sorry to take so much time to upload! I don't know why but I kind of blocked myself and I couldn't write! But I found out that changing the background colour of the pages and changing the font type and size, the blocking goes away, so I guess it's a psychological thing or something. (Maybe it's because I'm tired and stressed because of college D: ) I'm also sorry that it's short, but I'm pretty sure you'll like it c:  
_

_Well, anyways, here you have~ No music again, just cuteness. Enjoy!_

* * *

Chapter 11  
Piano

"No, no, we shouldn't…" Levi whispered as he tried to move Eren away from him. After they'd lunch, he had stood up and walked towards the stairs when Eren suddenly grabbed him and pushed him towards the wall to passionately kiss him. He was overcome by the kiss, yet he stopped at some point and said those words, saddened by a large amount of reasons.

"Why not?" Eren whispered, surrounding Levi's waist with his arms and getting closer to him, despite the intentions of Levi to move him away.

"We shouldn't, alright? We just shouldn't." Levi tried to escape to Eren's affective gestures. However, Eren knew that he wasn't really trying to get away, since he wasn't even using his strength for that. Was that Levi's way to say _"Please, convince me that we should"? _ He stopped him and asked the same question again. Levi sighed, tossing his head back and resting it on the wall. "You're fucking fifteen and you're a minor. We shouldn't." He snapped as he shoved him away. "Now where did that come from?"

Eren walked away, laughing. "You were asking for it, after being an asshole by ranting my food."

"And what do you expect when you're food tastes like crap?" Levi pointed out, completely annoyed, and his next words were suddenly shut up with another of Eren's kisses. "Stop taking advantage of my blindness!"

"No, I won't; you're giving me too many reasons." Eren guided his steps to the kitchen again to wash the dishes.

"You're constantly asking for me to beat your ass. Stop it already." Levi grumbled as he frowned. "And there are no reasons to annoy me like that." He added.

"Of course there are!" Eren screamed from the kitchen. "You complained about my food all the time during lunch; and now you've forgotten that my birthday was before retaking Wall Maria! I'm sixteen now! You deserved it!"

"Tch, stupid sixteen little shit." He finally resumed his steps up the stairs, annoyed by this new game of Eren.

Anyways, he agreed that he deserved those surprises from him and wasn't really annoyed by the kisses themselves, but more about the fact that even though he knew that Eren was notoriously willing to stay with him and reach him, he still wasn't completely comfortable with that. Nevertheless, that passionate kiss had actually been a painkiller for all those sad feelings he had when he told Eren about his past.

He'd never done that. He'd never talked someone about it except for one person, and it wasn't even to Alessa; the only person he'd ever told that story was now death. But there was Eren, overzealously juggling to cross through his barriers to reach him, full of good intentions. The truth was that he couldn't reject that, at the same time that he couldn't accept it. Why to choose him? Really, why? He couldn't get it, he truly couldn't. For him, there was no reason why Eren could ever be interested in him, a former soldier who got blind and has no future, because there was nothing for him to do now as well as to depend on others. But, talking to Eren about his past was quite a relief, because he listened and supported. He was _there_ _for him_. Those words had felt like a stab in his heart, or maybe like a Cupid's touch. He couldn't know, and he couldn't decide whether to let Eren reach him or not, even though Eren seemed to be gaining too many points in his favor.

He walked into his room to lie down in the bed, leaning on his right side, caressing his own arms and thinking about the fact that they'd already slept together in the same bed for the second time, and in each of those two, it felt overwhelmingly good. It had faded the loneliness away, the darkness and all his demons. He sighed; he was confused. He was way too over confused that he'd already forgotten that they had plans for that afternoon. Eren interrupted his moment alone.

"Hey, weren't we going to the Bohemian Sub?" He said from the door of the room, waiting for a reply; but as Levi didn't answer, he approached and kneel beside the bed. "Are you even awake?" He put a hand on Levi's waist and pulled to get him on his back.

"I don't feel like going out today." Levi whispered. Eren, on the other hand, sighed and rested his forehead on the bed, trying to recharge his energies. He then looked up again.

"How do you feel, then? If it's not _like going out_, it must be something else." Levi turned again to face the wall, wondering how much Eren would ever be trying to meet his goal. "You're quite bipolar today. Why don't you let everything out and leave it to me?" Eren continued.

"I'm not a burden you have to bear." Levi sadly whispered, hearing another of Eren's sighs.

_"God, give me strength."_ Eren thought before standing up. "You're right." He stated. "I do not really have to bear you, nobody really has to." He continued. "But I already told you that I _want to_."

"Why!? I don't get it… We both know that I'm not someone easy to stand."

"You're right again; it really isn't easy." Eren chuckled, sitting next to him and raising one of his hands to reach one of Levi's and to hold it. "You're also stubborn, blunt, unbearable and unapproachable. You're a fucking clean-freak and very uneasy to be around."

"You're not helping at all to my self esteem." Levi grumbled.

"But you also are a good and honest man. You care about people, more than anyone would imagine. You're brave, clever, scrupulous and confident. You're admirable. And most important; you've got way too many feelings about everything, because you feel everything in a too much intense way." He paused, feeling how Levi was now squeezing his hand. "Am I correct?"

It took a long moment for Levi to answer. "Yes."

"Now, let go that depression of yours and feel better, ok? Otherwise, I'll have to tickle you until you suffocate because of laughing." He softly smiled as he interlaced his fingers with Levi's, lovely holding hands. "And also, stop keeping those feelings for yourself."

"I can't help with that…"

"Entrust them to me."

Slowly, the silence was replaced by the sound of Levi standing up, Eren helping him to get down the stairs more quickly than usual and both of them leaving the house and holding their hands. Before, it was a gesture in which Eren would help Levi to go around the streets, but now, it wasn't a task anymore, but an affective gesture. They were holding hands because they wanted to, not because they had to; and it was comfortable for both of them. They headed north, to the inner door of Sina.

·

The night before had been a complete failure; not because something had gone wrong with the work they were doing, but because Alessa couldn't find the opportunity –or the courage- to talk to her father, but there was another day to try. She was thinking of how to approach him with the right words when a soldier approached her, telling her that her father was calling her and that he was up in the Wall. "Perfect." She thought before maneuvering her 3D gear to get to the top of the Wall. There, Erwin and Hanji were looking down to Shiganshina, but looked at her as she approached to see what they were looking at. "What is it?" She asked as she glanced down. Suddenly, her heart seemed to skip a beat at a first moment, only to accelerate into override out of sheer terror, riddled with a sudden rush of cold sweat, his breathing was cut short by fear.

"Hey, are you alright?" Hanji slightly touched one of her shoulders to make her react. Erwin also got close a little more.

"Yeah…" She stammered. "It's just that… I've never seen one before." She added still talking with difficulty, referring to the titans on her words. It was true; that was her first sight of them, and had been terrifying. "What… what are they doing?"

"This is why we called you." Erwin approached, hugging her slightly by her waist. "It seems that they discovered that by scratching our provisional wall, they can slowly destroy it."

"If they continue like this, they'll get through the first wall in a few hours, and in some more they'll get through the second one." Hanji added, looking down as the titans were surrounding the first wall and scratching it. "We need you to either accelerate the building process to its maximum possible, or either find a solution to this problem."

"I assume that you just can't kill them, can you?" Alessa asked.

"We can, indeed." Erwin responded. "But that'd take several loses."

It took some minutes to Alessa to get back to her usual self for trying to think of a solution. "Then, I think we can try something." She whispered to herself more than to the others, still considering several factors. "Distracting them for some minutes would take less loses. Once distracted, we strengthen the wall; for that, we can use the building materials for the definite wall and call for more to be transported here."

"What if it doesn't work? We'll be risking the whole mission and…"

"It will work." Alessa interrupted Hanji. "Believe me, we can make this work. It's a matter of timing and coordination. You people lead the titans away for some minutes, and my squad and I strengthen the walls with some concrete, every time it's needed." She sighed. "The Stationary Guard will have to get working with the cannons, though; we need to avoid more titans getting close here."

Erwin looked at his daughter carefully, especially analyzing that look she had on her eyes. They were filled with confidence, just as her mother's eyes; he didn't need anything more than that to know that she was serious, despite the fear she'd experienced minutes before. "Alright, let's give the details and the instruction to the soldiers and get everybody ready." With Erwin's words, Hanji immediately went looking after her squad, but Alessa didn't move from his position. "You do realize how dangerous it is, do you?" He asked.

"Of course I do." She answered, sweetly smiling to him. "That's why I was thinking that I should tell you how much I love you, dad."

He couldn't help smiling, not as wide as her, though. "Your mother would be as proud as I am now. You've become strong."

"No, dad. I'm not strong, I'm just mad." She shrugged. "Mad enough to get married once we finish with this."

"Wait… What?!"

"I love you dad, I'm going to call my team!"

·

Back in Sina, Levi had managed to talk with the owner of the bar, which was closed by the time they arrived, to use the piano during that afternoon, with the condition that they'd have to at least buy something there, so he bought a bottle of whisky. They both sat in front of the piano, down on the basement of the Bohemian Sub. The little windows over the stage were open for the light of the day to come in, also giving Eren the sight of the feet of the people who were walking outside on the street. Levi then started to speak quickly, more than he'd ever listened to him.

"In music, you have 7 different natural notes: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La and Si; plus other 5 accidental notes that go between some of the naturals." Levi started, getting comfortable and giving the bottle of whisky to Eren. "Together, these 12 notes form what's called a chromatic scale. In written music, you have a stave that consists of 5 lines; each line has a different note assigned, and the spaces between them too. When tuned to Sol clef, the lower line is Mi, then the space between it and the next is Fa, and the next line is Sol, and so on." He paused for some minutes. "Are you listening?"

"Uh, yeah, I am." Eren responded, pouring a glass of whiskey for Levi, who was now his teacher.

"Anyway, we're not going through reading music sheets for obvious reasons, but if you really want to learn how to play this thing, you'll have to find a way to learn it." He continued, receiving the glass of whiskey that Eren gave him.

"I will." He said softly, smiling.

Levi left the glass over the piano and continued talking. "Now, as for the piano itself, the basics are pretty simple: the distribution of the keys is linear, meaning that it goes up the chromatic scale in order, from left to right." He explained as he moved his hands, gesticulating what he was saying. It was a normal thing for people to do, but since Levi had got blind, he'd stopped doing it, and now that Eren was seeing that again in him, he felt like if little by little Levi was returning to normal. "The white keys are the natural notes, while the black ones are accidentals. When you push a key, it moves a small hammer head that hits a tuned string; each key has its own string that's tuned to its specific note." He drank a sip from his glass of whiskey, and continued. "Tuning depends on the length and tension of the string, and needs adjustments after some time to stay in tune, but this is done by a professional, not brats."

There was a long silence, a silence in which Levi was waiting for Eren to say something, but Eren had his mind over thinking about other things. "Eren?" Levi called him after some minutes. "Eren? Are you fucking listening?"

"Yes, I am." Eren whispered. "I'm sorry; it's just that you mesmerize me…" He added, making Levi get back in surprise. "You really were onto it, it's amazing. I would have never imagined that you liked music so much."

Levi swallowed, turning his head to the other side and hiding a slight blush. "I grew up with music." He explained, getting now his hands on the keyboard. "Let's practice, then." Following his words, he started to play a simple melody with his right hand. "Here, if you get to play this today, you'll have my respect. Now, give me your right hand."

"My right hand?" Eren questioned and it took him some seconds to react to raise his hand from his lap and look for Levi's. Levi immediately took his hand and put his own over it, aligning his fingers. Meanwhile, Levi's left hand was holding his Eren's wrist.

"Now, I'm going to press over your fingers, so we'll play together. This way, I'll show you how to play the melody I want you to play, and then you'll try on your own. Got it?" Levi explained, using his left hand to guide both of their hand to the keyboard and, before Eren could answer, he started to press down Eren's fingers.

Eren reacted to move clumsily his fingers, barely getting to play what Levi was trying to show him. It wasn't because of lack of talent or any other difficulty; what was making him horribly fail at playing was that he was indeed distracted looking at Levi's hands. He'd held them lots of times, but hadn't paid enough attention to them to notice that they were small and soft, and didn't seem to be the hands of a former soldier.

"C'mon Eren, don't make me feel that I'm losing my time doing this." Levi called Eren's attention.

"I'm sorry." He replied, trying to catch up with the rhythm they were playing. Soon, his fingers were able to play the melody as Levi's fingers were guiding him and without warning, Levi moved his hands away, letting Eren play for himself. The fact that he could continue was, for him, amazing.

"Good." Levi pointed out, drinking more whiskey. "Now, continue like this as much as you can, without stopping." Eren didn't answer; he felt that if he'd say something, he'd lost the rhythm he was playing, or play the wrong key or something. He preferred to stay calm, in silence, focused on his right hand that was following the track that Levi's fingers had left for him. At some point, Levi started to play another melody with his left hand, which made him lose his own melody.

"Crap, I can't do it if you're playing too." Eren complained.

"Then how do you expect to play a song with only one hand? You have to learn to maintain one hand playing something while the other plays other notes, like this." Then, Levi started to play with both hands, keeping the melody he had been playing with his left hand while he played the one he had taught to Eren with his right hand. "See? Now start all over again." He ordered, entertaining himself with his glass of whiskey while Eren started to play again. However, any time Levi tried to add the background melody to Eren's performance, he would lose his concentration and play everything wrong.

"I'm sorry. I'm really trying." Eren apologized with a shrug, taking a moment to continue, but also noticing that Levi had already finished his first glass of whiskey.

"Maybe you need some motivation." Levi proposed, giving his empty glass to Eren so he could fill it again. "What if I offer you something as a reward if you get to play with both hands today?"

"That sounds interesting." Eren chuckled as he refilled Levi's glass with the drink. "And what are you willing to offer?" He wanted to know.

"I don't know." He said, drinking some whiskey. "What do you want?"

"Are you really going to let me choose?" Eren questioned, thinking of something already.

"Yeah, why not?" Levi answered, leaving the glass over the piano again, next to the bottle. "You were really keen on asking stuff, so maybe I could tell you more of the stuff you want if you manage to be a good boy and play well the piano today."

"But, what if instead of choosing that stuff…" Eren started, catching Levi's curiosity. "What if I ask for sex?"

Levi frowned and remained in silence for some seconds. "You little shit. That requires the complete song and two bottles of whiskey for me to accept."

"I can buy you another one." Eren quickly added, feeling way more motivated to make the effort to play. Anyway, he knew he wouldn't make it, but messing with Levi was way too funny for not doing it.

"Tch." Levi didn't expect any of that. _Any of that!_ "Fine. If you get to play all I've shown you so far, we get laid; but I won't be helping you anymore." He agreed clenching his teeth. "But if you don't success, you sleep outside with the horse." Now _that_ was challenging.

·

The day had turned to have good results. Alessa's quick actions prevented the titans from getting through the provisional walls that were protecting Wall Maria, and the Stationary Guards were keeping apart other titans using the cannons, while the Scouting Legion's elite soldiers were getting rid of the ones that went too close. All this while the rest of the soldiers –from all three military branches- were working on re-building the door of Wall Maria as fast as they could.

And by the time the sun had already hidden behind the horizon and the titan's activity decreased, they could finally get the chance to take some minutes to rest. Erwin didn't waste time to reach her daughter. "So, who's the lucky one?" After those words, Alessa spent the next hour talking with his father, an opportunity that they hadn't had in a long period of time. They not only talked about her upcoming marriage or future husband, but also about plenty of things; how was the cat doing, how much work did she had, how did her projects end up, how was her team working out; but ended on the topic that they both wanted to talk from the beginning, one that was worrying them both: Levi.

"It worries me that depression he seems to have." Erwin had gone to the main point of treating that topic. "I'm afraid that he despairs."

"I think that his depression is completely natural." Alessa pointed out as she stopped her walk. "I mean, think through it: He's got nothing to do, no duty, no tasks, nothing to keep his mind busy. Therefore, he's got time to over think and feel his loss, because he's lost everything he'd built in these last years; and as there's nothing that keep his mind busy and apart from these feelings, he's slowly falling apart."

"That is why you managed to leave him with Eren, don't you?" Erwin commented, resuming their walk.

"Yeah, somebody has to keep his mind busy, and Eren is doing quite well." She replied. "Besides, Eren was interested on that in the first place. Levi just needs to get use to him."

"I hope he can."

·

The night had fallen and they were taken off from the piano because the bar had opened and people were starting to come over, so Eren couldn't continue practicing. So, at the end, he hadn't managed to play both melodies at the same time, though he was close to do it. Maybe one or two more hours could have made him get laid that night, but that wouldn't happen. He willingly carried Levi on his back as they returned home, fearing that he could fall and get hurt if he walked after drinking one and a half bottle of whiskey on his own.

"Off with the horse." Levi ordered as he leaned down on his bed after Eren had left him on it. Eren sighed, kindly kissed him on his forehead and left. He wasn't planning to actually sleep outside with the horse, but he could at least make Levi believe he would.

Levi, on the other hand, took off his shoes and clothes to wear his pajamas – a simple and casual shirt and sloppy pants. He got into the bed and leaned to his right side, as usual, trying to get some sleep, but he just couldn't. The sole idea of being alone drove his mind to a madness that was leading to Eremophobia. It wasn't too many minutes after that he got up and went downstairs, just to find Eren in the living room.

"What happened?" Eren asked to Levi, worried because of the expression he had on his face and his accelerated breathing. "Levi, what is it?"

A part of Levi was trying not to hurt his pride, while the other half of him was internally screaming for some company. "I feel lonely…" He finally whispered thanks to the help of alcohol. Otherwise, he wouldn't have said it.

"Do you want me to stay with you?" Eren got close, hugging him.

"Please." Levi's hands rose to encircle Eren's neck.

"Alright, let's get upstairs."

So, Eren carried Levi again to the bedroom and gently leaned on the bed, next to Levi. They both hugged each other, Eren passing his arms by Levi's waist, and Levi passing his arms by Eren's neck; which draw his curiosity, because Levi was hugging too strong.

"Levi, are you ok?" He asked in a whisper, recently noticing that the sorter man was hiding his face in his chest.

"No." He admitted, whispering.

"How can I make you feel better?"

"Just…" Levi got closer to Eren. "Just stay with me."

"I will until I die, my dear."

"You better don't fucking die soon, Jaeger." He commanded, as if he would have if he still were Corporal. He perfectly knew he wasn't anymore and that Eren was now occupying his rank, but those last two sentences were enough to make him feel immensely better at the point that he relaxed and fell asleep really fast. Eren admired him meanwhile, knowing that he already was sleeping, because he could notice how relaxed he was. Who would have thought that he would learn to know Levi so much in so less time?


	12. Chapter 12

_Hi guys, I'm reaaaaaaaally sorry for taking so much to update. Really, really sorry. Life has been shitty. I didn't have vacation as I changed from one semester to the other, and college has been eating my life every day. I'm really sorry, but I'll bring you stuff more often now that I finally managed to organize my schedule. Love you all, and thanks for the reviews. That really makes me happy _  
_By the way, if you want to leave me messages on tumblr, feel free to look for my blog: althar-of-naught. _

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Chapter 12  
Love?

Two weeks later, there was a rainy spring morning, very cold and dark. When Eren woke up, Levi was still asleep and curled up, hugging him as if there were no tomorrow. He tried to move away, but couldn't; Levi was hugging him too tight, so he sighed and hugged him back. The minutes passed by slowly, and the only entertainment he had was looking at the wall, until Levi abruptly woke up. That was another nightmare, for sure.

"You ok?" Eren asked as he did every time Levi had had a nightmare. Levi remained in silence, still hugging Eren as he was doing before and trying to regulate his breathing again. Finally, he sighed and moved away a little, enough to get comfortable and use one of Eren's arms as a pillow.

Eren wasn't expecting for Levi to tell him about the dream, though he had decided to wait for him to speak on his own, so Levi's words were quite a surprise. "I dreamt about them."

"About who?" Eren inquired, staring at Levi's face. It gave the feeling that he was terrified.

"Petra." He stammered. "Auruo, Erd, Gunther."

Silence was comforting for both of them, along with the affection of a hug that had turned to be mutually sheltering. Levi, though, soon changed position to turn around, facing now the wall again, as usual.

"Hey, what was that? Why do you turn your back to me like this?" Eren asked.

"Like what?" Levi inquired, still getting comfortable and covering himself a little more with the blankets.

"Like you just did." Eren passed his arm over Levi's waist, getting closer.

"It's just more comfortable to be like this, what's wrong with it?" Levi snapped back, though letting Eren hug him. Eren chose not to respond to that, since he knew that after any nightmare, Levi always had a bad mood. Levi sighed, turning to let Eren see him as he spoke again. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to speak like that." He said in a sigh. "I'm… I'm still not used to this."

"What do you mean by _this_?" Eren asked for a clarification with soft words, trying to get what the other was saying.

"This." Levi said as if it were obvious, but apparently it wasn't. "I mean…" He sighed again. "This: You and I sleeping together every night, being alone, living and having normal days as if we had nothing better to do. This, Eren, how can you don't fucking get it?"

"Well, I'm sorry I don't get it." Eren blinked, confused. "Why is it that hard to get used to?"

"I don't know, alright!? I haven't even overcome my friend's deaths, you're asking too much!" What had made him talk like that so suddenly?

Those words would have made anybody feel embarrassed because of the tone on them, but instead, they were like a door that had just opened for Eren to reach him, so… "Want to talk about it?"

Levi moaned displeased, stressed out. Was there a way to make Eren give up? He remained in silence for a long time, until he himself gave up. "I miss them." He said. "I miss them so fucking much."

"Yeah, me too." Eren whispered, getting closer to Levi's body, spooning. "I'm sorry about their deaths… Seriously, really sorry."

"It's not your fault." Levi's words came out as fast as never before. "Stop saying you could have done something. Shit happens, alright? It's not your fault. How many times do I have to say it?"

"You say that but you haven't overcome their deaths? How is that possible?" Eren replied to him, a bit annoyed by how contradictory that sounded.

"Shut up, shitty brat." Somehow, his voice softened by the time he spoke again. "You should have got to know them better…"

"I wish I could have known them better." Eren responded, which caused a small, yet beautiful smile on Levi's face. "Maybe I still can, if you talk about them to me." He was really trying to approach him.

Levi remained very pensive, bringing back some memories. "I remember the first time I met them." He started. "It was my first expedition, as well as Petra's and Auruo's. Erd and Gunther had been in the Legion for more time. I wasn't with them during the expedition, though I was first put on Erwin's squad, but as we were getting back to Shiganshina, I was sent to be with the group of 'newbies', so I met those two first."

"And how was it?" He was fighting against himself for not to ask about what they had told him before they died.

"I really didn't want to be around them…" Levi whispered, as if he shouldn't be saying the next words. "They had pissed on their pants." There it was; and he didn't even have to ask. He chuckled a little, and then waited for Levi to continue. "Anyway, with time, Erwin promoted me to Corporal and made me choose the people of my squad."

"How did you choose them?" Levi was a good story-teller, and Eren was starting to feel more than interested in that story.

"I asked Erwin to have the best of the bests in my squad, but he said that those were already taken into his squad, Mike's and Hanji's." Eren _ow_-ed in a whisper. "Yeah, _ow_, so I was like 'then I'll make my boys to be the best of the bests' and chose the best soldiers I had the privilege to observe during the latest expeditions: Erd, Gunther and Auruo."

"What about Petra?" Eren interrupted.

"I haven't got to that part yet, Eren." Upset for being interrupted, he continued. "As I was saying, Erwin told me that I was going to need one more member on my squad, but I didn't mind about it; the boys and I were doing fine." He paused to have a deep breath and continued. "Soon I learnt that Erd and Gunther were more than good friends, they seemed like twins, and Auruo was very fond of talking about Petra."

"Really?"

"Yeah, he had feelings towards her." Levi explained, doing a gesture similar to a shrugging, but on the bed. "Because of his talking was that I noticed that she was indeed good, but she needed a better squad to work with, because she was better working in teams than solo."

"So you joined her to your squad." Eren pointed out.

"Yeah, to Auruo's happiness, I followed his recommendation and brought her to our squad." Levi smiled again. "We trained hard, met each other to a point you wouldn't imagine, and suddenly I found myself receiving an amount of respect from them than I hadn't imagined I would get." He sighed out of cheer. He was happy to remember. "It felt good, though, and with time I got comfortable with the fact that they were counting on me as much as I counted on them."

"The way you said that makes me feel that there's a '_but'_ in the middle of the story." Eren commented.

"Yeah, there is one. Petra started to have feelings towards me, and she was the only one who didn't notice that I wasn't going to have feelings in return."

"Ow… That's… Bad." Eren was surprised. "Wait, what does that thing of _she was the only one not to notice_ mean? Did the others know that you were…?"

"Erd and Gunther were no men to trick, Eren; and Auruo was so desperate for Petra to notice him that I thought that somebody should do something about the situation, so yeah, I told Petra that nothing was going to ever happen between she and I and after I broke her heart, I had to say Auruo why."

"That's a really messed up situation."

"Thank you for pointing it out, genius; now let me finish." Levi turned to smash a pillow on Eren's face and softly hold it, then, he continued. "Anyways, Auruo continued trying to get her attention while I continued trying to get her away, but she never ever gave up on me." He let go the pillow and leaned on the bed again. "At the beginning it was really annoying, at the point that I considered to send her to another squad, but we were already a very good team so…"

"So?" _C'mon, don't stop now_.

"So, Auruo started to imitate me." He snorted. "Though it was a really horrible imitation, it was fun, and that distracted Petra from being upon me all the time and gave Auruo a way to be with her more hours per day, so everybody was happy."

"I thought that you didn't know about the imitation." Eren interrupted again.

"I was completely aware of it, Eren; everybody was, and time taught every of us to enjoy that, and in the end, it ended up being a game everybody but Petra was cool about. I know she enjoyed it after all, though she couldn't stand that Auruo was horrible at imitating." He sighed again, taking some seconds to continue talking. "Now's when I think you have a lot in common with her."

Eren was fascinated by the fact how easily Levi had finally began talking. "Really? How's that?"

"Because you're as annoying as she was when it comes to trying to get my attention, but you both are good people, very good people; you're also stubborn about it, never giving up, even though I've been trying to lead you to dead ends on the maze." Levi whispered. "But at the same time, you're different."

"Nice to know, I'll try harder." Eren rolled his eyes because of the maze fact.

Levi slightly smiled in a sad way. "No need to… I give up." What?

Eren's mind took a while to process that information. "What?"

"I give up." Levi repeated. "No more leading to dead ends, no more fighting. I give up, you win."

"Again… What?"

·

To everyone's amusement, Alessa had divided the people who were working on building into three groups, which would constantly be working two of them simultaneously while one was resting, and they would switch every 8 hours. This way, every group would work all day and have 8 hours to rest, and thus there would always be people working and the building could be faster and advance even during night. With this regimen, it took them two weeks to accomplish 3/4 of the complete process, though they went out of material. Due to this and the unexpected rain, they were all getting ready to come back to Wall Rose.

As for these two weeks, Alessa had got her eyes on a brilliant mind. Any time there were any kind of trouble, there were three people who would think of a quick solution: Alessa, Hanji or Armin. This was the reason why she had approached him before the trip back to Rose started.

"Armin, you really did a good job there." She congratulated him, passing one arm over his shoulders.

"Thank you, sir." He was humble, and a little blushed too.

"So I'll go straight to the point: would you like to join my squad on the Military Police?" She was serious, and no matter what excuses or questions Armin had, she pulled them all away until she had convinced him. It didn't take her too much. "Don't worry, Armin, you'll fit fine." Alessa told him before riding her horse. They were going back.

The trip to Karanese was fast, though everybody wanted to get there quickly to avoid spending too much time under the rain, but the trip didn't end there. Erwin guided the Scouting Legion straight to their Headquarters near Trost, the Stationary Guards returned to their works and Alessa urged her team horses to Hermiha, including Armin with them. Once in Hermiha, she dispersed the squad, giving orders to meet her at their office in two hours.

"Where are we going, sir?" Armin asked once they had turned their way away from the others.

"Home. I need to change my clothes." She gently answered, which draw Armin's mind to remember himself that she had traveled all the way from Maria to Karanese without a cloak to protect her from the rain, and it wasn't until Karanese that Erwin gave his to her, so she was completely wet under it anyways. "Besides, don't you want to see Eren?"

"Eren? But he must be at the castle." Armin replied, looking at her while she jumped out off her horse and opened the door to the garden of her house.

Alessa chuckled and guided her horse into the garden, right next to Levi's horse. "I just hope they have lunch for us." She said, waiting for Armin to leave his horse with the others. "C'mon, let's go in." He followed her steps into the house, both finding a surprise that they weren't expecting.

The fireplace warmed the air in the room, smoothly lighting it. Eren was sitting on the couch, leaning on his back and hugging Levi, who was sitting between his legs and has his feet up on the couch. Levi had passed his right arm under Eren's left armpit and had his left hand fingers curled up on Eren's hair. To cap it all, they were both covered by a blanket and they were both deeply asleep.

"Perfect." Alessa mumbled, calling Armin's attention.

"Perfect?" He repeated, confused. He didn't even know what did that mean, either what he had looked at.

"Uh, yeah, perfect." She stammered. "Look at the fireplace; we can dry our clothes now." She added, taking off her boots and walking towards the fireplace. She moved a chair closer and clung Erwin's cloak on it next to the fireplace and continued to do the same with her jacket. "Hey, if I were you, I would do the same here." Armin was still looking at Eren, but with her words, he imitated her.

He took off his cloak, boots and jacket and stayed still next to the fireplace. Alessa, meanwhile, announced that she was going to the second floor to change the rest of her clothes, so told him to stay there until she returned. He did, warming himself with the fireplace. His shirt was completely dry, but his pants were a little soaked, which made him feel cold. Still staring at Levi and Eren, he suddenly realized that Alessa knew that they were there in the house, and suddenly assumed that they'd been there since the Scouting Legion left the headquarters.

While Armin had his conclusions in his mind, Levi moved a little to get more comfortable, making a book fell from the couch and waking up Eren. Armin walked to pick up the book from the floor and when he stood up, he found a pair of green eyes looking at him.

"Armin?" Eren lazily whispered. "Armin? What are you doing here?"

"I came here with Alessa." He whispered, not intending to wake Levi up. "I'm joining her squad in the Military Police."

Eren blinked several times, waking up and trying to get what Armin said. "Really? That's…" He yawned. "Really nice."

"Yeah, I guess so." Armin handed to him the book that had fallen. "So… You're dating?"

"What? No." Eren didn't think about it; he just reacted to answer immediately. Armin, though, narrowed his eyes, knowing Eren for enough time to notice that he was lying. Eren sighed under the pressure of that glance. "No, Armin, we're not dating. He's just depressed as hell, alright?" He tried that way, to which Armin nodded.

"Alright." He said and turned, listening to Alessa's steps down the stairs.

She appeared wearing another pair of white jeans, a light green shirt and her brown wedge heel boots, and she was also scrubbing her hair with a towel. She gave the impression of being absorbed on her thoughts, which made her ignore them as she walked towards the kitchen. Minutes after, she returned to the living room with an apple on one hand and the other still on her head, scrubbing it with the towel. Then she looked at them, almost with a blank stare.

"Did something happen?" Armin asked gently.

Alessa sighed and looked to the ceiling. "I just remembered the many, many things I have to do within a week."

"Like what?" Eren joined the chatter with a question as he was already used to that.

"Like getting married, for instance." She said as normal as she could, and then she walked towards the kitchen. "Is there something to eat, Eren?"

She prepared something to eat within some minutes, while Armin sat in one of the chairs in front of Eren and updated him, telling him the story on how and why was he becoming part of Alessa's squad. He also told him about all they worked back on Wall Maria, he told him about the time he spent with the others and how beautiful the trip was to Wall Maria. Armin's words got stick to his mind once he'd told them. _"I nearly forgot how beautiful the landscape was and how the neighboring of Shiganshina looked like. I even had the chance to go up the wall and watch the city for a while. It still feels like home."_ It still felt like home. An hour passed and Alessa announced that they should go, taking advantage of the fact that the rain had stopped. By the night, the sky was cloudless and the moon was shining bright.

The next day went as usual. They woke up with some small talk, had breakfast with small talk, got a bath, got dressed and went out, having small talk. They hadn't talked more about Levi's past; knowing what he heard the day before was enough to full his curiosity and let Levi have some privacy before another fall of questioning. However, he was still surprised on how easily Levi had spoken about it. He hadn't even asked for it.

The walk to the Bohemian Sub was slow and relaxed. The streets were full of mud, so Eren had to guide Levi with special care, trying to avoid the mud as much as they could. Going there had become a daily thing, especially because Levi had got down to teach him to play the piano thoroughly, so they had been practicing the same song from the first day, over and over again. It seemed to him that Levi was really trying for him to learn it correctly and perfectly. On the following two days, he managed to finally play the complete song, but only with his right hand. At least he could do it while Levi played the background melody with his left hand.

"You've done well, brat. Now let's get that left hand of yours to work. It'd be a shame if you play this song only with one hand." Levi had acknowledged his progress, but didn't give him time to rest between one goal and the other. He started to think then what was the deal with that song, and why did he wanted him to learn that much and that fast. On the third day, sadly, he couldn't practice anymore.

It was a Friday night, and it was Alessa's marriage. She and Ronald –he found out the husband's name on that same day, and also found out that Levi couldn't stand him- had rented a great hall to celebrate the ceremony and have dinner. She'd invited people going from her closest relatives to people nobody would have imagined she would invite. Eren thought that it had to be with social classes or something. The people that most caught his attention were Zacklay and other soldiers, not only from the Military Police but also from the Stationary Guard and the Scouting Legion. She'd also invited Hanji, who she barely knew. They'd meet not long ago. Charlotte was also there.

Her complete squad was there too, including Armin, who had joined some days ago, and Rocio, the girl Alessa had to kick out of it to be replaced by Armin. Eren asked Levi what had happened there, and Levi told him that nobody could really stand Rocio, but she was smart enough to be on the squad as long as there was nobody smarter than her. She'd gained her own place on the squad, until Armin appeared.

There were some groups of people that were more likely to be the husband's family, and some other people he couldn't recognize. However, the people who had been hired to serve the dinner were people that he'd recommended himself. Jean, Mikasa and Connie were working as waiters and waitress, along with some other girls and boys that Alessa knew from before. Sasha hadn't been given the privilege. It was amazing how much people Alessa knew, and he wondered how many more knew her.

The ceremony was a whole new deal for him. He'd never been in a marriage, and he'd never known what was it like, so all the process was new for him. When they moved on to have dinner, he found out that all the people invited was supposed to seat on a pre-established table. He also found out that they were supposed to sit on the same table that Alessa and his husband, along with Erwin, the man's parents and, to his surprise, Charlotte.

"Why is your mother sitting with us? Is there any particular reason?" Eren asked near Levi's ear, taking care that nobody else could hear.

"Close relative." Levi whispered back, giving no more explanations. That didn't answer Eren's doubts, but didn't get deep on the topic.

Dinner was great, being far the best food he'd ever eaten, and it caught his attention that even though the food was marvelous, Levi didn't want to eat at all. He'd barely touched his food. "What is it? You're not hungry?"

"No, it's not that." He answered, leaning over to Eren, to which Eren got close too. "I can't really see my food, remember? I'm a mess eating, and I don't want to be a mess during my best friend's wedding, ok?"

"Is that really why you're not eating?" Eren couldn't avoid thinking that that was a very childish excuse, but after some minutes he thought that he may be right. He really was a mess. He paid attention to other details that he'd been missing before.

He looked at people around, enjoying the landscape of smiles and laughter that were around. He'd never seen Erwin smiling as that happy before and really enjoying a meal or a chatter; Hanji was more enthusiastic than usual, even though she didn't even got to know much the bride, but a special occasion like that one was enough to make everybody more enthusiastic than usual. Armin seemed to enjoy a very profound conversation with Alessa's friends; Pixis had already drunk a bottle of wine and was asking for more, taking advantage of the occasion to celebrate; even Zacklay was having a really great time. Charlotte, whatsoever, was sitting still on her chair, still eating with mechanic and robotic movements. She was sitting next to Levi, who was on his right, so he had her one sit away.

But even though she wasn't wearing a smile on her face, she still looked wonderful as everybody else on that hall, wearing a very sophisticated lady dress and some soft jewelry. He remained looking at her until she looked back with intense penetrating grey eyes. A sudden noise of a fork hitting softly a glass caught everybody's attention and the music stopped to create a comfortable silence.

Ronald had stood up beside Alessa and was looking at the crowd of guests that had attended. His eyes were dark green and had black dense hair, short and with no remarkable characteristics. Pale skin as Alessa and tall as she was, he looked at the perfect match for her. He greeted the crowd of people that was staring at him, holding a glass of wine in his left hand. Then he said kind and thankful words, talking about how much he loved Alessa and cute stuff. He didn't say anything remarkable; he wasn't remarkable at all. He noticed that Ronald was way too simple to be with a so complex woman than Alessa. Maybe that was what she wanted, though.

After he finished talking and before making a toast, Alessa got up quickly and took the glass from his hands, smiling widely. "No, no dear, don't make them drink yet, they're going to run dry this room!" She said funnily and the whole room laughed politely. "Ok, so, now's when I'm supposed to talk and say how much I love this man beside me." She started with her own speech. "But fuck with traditions. I want to say other stuffs now." People laughed again.

"Ok, so, how do I start?" She moved to get comfortable, supporting her weight on one leg. "Well, I have to say that I'm happy, first. Yes, I know that you'll think that I'm in a permanent happy state, that's right, but now's a more special feeling, you know?" She put a hand on her waist, in a very funny and friendly posture. "It's special because I've managed to get through tough experiences in life and learnt a lot with them, and the most important thing I learnt is that I'm not alone. Nobody isn't really alone, actually. Humans can be very bitchy and selfish, but there's always someone turning around from that; there's someone walking in another direction. That's what I'm happy for, because I finally found somebody who walks in the same direction I do and has accepted me for the way I think." She looked to her husband, who smiled stupidly at those words and a soft and tender "awww" could be heard from the crowd of people.

"Yeah, I know it's weird to say, but it's true. Anyways, I invited you all because you're part of the same group of people we both are; people with personal ideas and expectations. I know this because I've had the opportunity to talk with every one of you, including the little boys at the back who served our meal." She looked at the waiters and waitresses that were leaning on the wall at the back; Mikasa, Jean and Connie being among them. "Yeah, guys, hi, I love you all too." They laughed shyly.

Alessa continued. "As I was saying, we're all unique. We're all green. We represent our mother nature in a shitty world that is trying to rip us apart. But we're strong, and we stand up every day wishing for something better and working for it, and that's what I want to point out today." Some people applauded softly, and some other joined, but she made a gesture for them to stop. "I'm not finished yet!" She exclaimed with a laugh and then continued.

"As I said, we all live in a society that is not ready yet to accept the changes humanity has been going through from many years ago; some people even really don't realize the danger outside the Walls, even I didn't really until I saw those creatures. And you know what they made me feel?" She paused a little, giving that feeling of expectancy for her to continue. "They naturally made me feel afraid, but alive. They made me want to make the most of every day of my life, so then when one of them eats me, I wouldn't fall in despair for finding my death, but I'd be happy for having such a wonderful life. And all this led me to have more feelings about everyone who had ever got on my way." She smiled tenderly and looked at Eren.

"Eren, you were the first person who went through my mind when I had all these realizations." She said tenderly, and suddenly he found in a situation in which everybody was looking at him –except Levi-. "Today, you represent the hope of humanity. You represent the future; our destiny. It's not on your hands, though, so don't feel under pressure with what I say, but always consider that what you have given us is the most precious gift humanity has received in the last hundred years. People who say you're a monster is fucking _wrong_. I say you're the messiah of our salvation, the key to open the door that leads to success. You have my respect and my loyalty. I'm honored to have you at my table. Thank you for being here tonight."

After those words, Eren's heart stopped. He felt overwhelmed by her speech, and felt how some tears fell apart his cheeks. They were tears of joy, though, joy because of the fact that she was the first person to acknowledge him as a human being and not a monster in a _public way_. He felt how those words were not only encouraging, but supportive. There was a way in Alessa's talking that meant not only what she said, but also that she had his back. Her next words were directed to Erwin, how a wonderful father he'd been, especially after her mother's death, then her speech turned to Levi and stressed what a wonderful and fucking idiot brother and friend he'd been, and surprisingly she'd also mentioned something about her aunt Charlotte and dear Zacklay.

But his chest couldn't stop beating hard. He had to excuse himself from the table to go to the bathroom and sob his feelings alone, but on the way there, he was stopped by Mikasa's hug. He hugged her back, strongly, and they were son followed by Armin. "Eren, that was wonderful!" Armin euphorically whispered, making the hug more intimate between the three of them.

"I know." He said back, smiling and letting a little laugh escape through his lips, rubbing his eyes and letting Mikasa wipe his tears. "I've never felt so publicly supported before." He added. "I mean, except for you, guys." He made a pause in which he hugged them both again. "She also made me think how important you two are for me. You're my family, and I love you both."

"It's reciprocal, Eren." Mikasa joined his words.

"Yes, it is indeed." Armin whispered.

It was indeed such a lovely scene, filled with the feelings of these three friends, until Jean got close and hugged them too. "It's a very nice moment, I see, but out there they're about to start dancing, I think, and Eren should be there to honor them, you know? And we have to serve people, Mikasa."

Eren couldn't avoid laughing, though Jean had used a very friendly and different way to talk. He was overwhelmed too because of Alessa's speech. Everyone was. "Alright, I see you guys later." When he turned to the hall again, he saw at the distance how Alessa was taking her father's hands, inviting him to dance the traditional dance with the father. They both seemed happy; they were absolutely happy.

The other followed him to the hall; Armin going to meet again his new squad mates and Mikasa and Jean served some people before leaning again in the wall they were before when Alessa was talking. "You know…" Mikasa started to speak, taking her scarf to cover her mouth and nose. "Somebody told me something a time ago." That was enough to call Jean's attention. "Somebody told me that you like me." She added.

Jean, on the other hand, got completely stunned. That was quite a surprise. "W-well…" He managed to put his mouth to talk. "That may be true."

"May be?" She asked, looking at him by the corner of her eye.

"It was time ago, that's why now is a may be situation." He explained, shrugging. "So, you didn't know before?"

"No. I didn't know until I was told." She said. "Why are now things different?"

"Well, I tried to approach you by trying to do things similar to the ones you liked and imitated you regarding other things you didn't like. But I got it all wrong."

Mikasa wasn't good at social relationships, especially with that kind of relationships, but suddenly that explanation made her realize how right Levi was when he told her about Jean. Jean had always been there trying to catch her attention, but she wasn't paying attention at all. "That makes sense." She commented. "That's why you hated Levi, because you thought I did it too."

"Yeah, but as I said, I got it wrong." He shrugged again.

"But, what if I told you that it doesn't matter? What if I told you that, yeah, I may want to have something with you too?" They hadn't looked at each other until that moment. They had just been looking at Alessa and Erwin dancing, at how gracefully they moved at the rhythm of music, at how funny it was when she finished dancing with him and walked towards the table to grab Levi and practically forced him to dance with her.

"Then maybe there are no more maybes anymore." They shared a quite conspirational look and, silently, held hands. "Just for the record," Mikasa spoke again. "I like red roses and that kind of cute stuff, so at least now you can get it right." They both smiled.

Love was in the air that night, and Levi wasn't there to be a clean freak about it. He was indeed still dancing with Alessa, but the song soon ended and another one started. Alessa let go of Levi's hands to cling to her husband's neck, leaving Levi alone in the middle of the dance floor. He stood still, and when Eren appeared beside him to lead him back, he followed.

"Hey, Eren." Levi called his attention as they were now beside the table. "Would you mind leading me to the piano?"

"Sure." He did. Levi sat down in front of it and Eren stood still beside it. "You're gonna play?" He asked, recently noticing that Levi had been quiet for the most of the night, and the only actual words he'd said in all the evening were the ones they secretly shared during dinner.

"Hm." He murmured in response, nonchalantly. They remained silent for some minutes, until Levi spoke again. "Do you think you could play your part of the song I taught you?"

"Now? Don't you think that it's not kind of the best moment? The party hasn't even finished." Eren said, looking back at how everybody was dancing. "Besides, there are other people playing music."

"Eren, it's the perfect occasion to play it. I taught it to you to play it today." Levi insisted, moving to his left to make room for Eren on the seat. "You just fucking do it." Eren sighed loudly and sat down beside him, raising his right hand near the keyboard. "Wait for this song to end, and then start."

Eren did so. The music stopped and so did the people who were dancing, and just when Alessa let go of his husband's neck, Eren started the melody of the song, followed by Levi's left hand with the background melody. Alessa's eyes flew directly to them and as a matter of seconds, tears came down her cheeks. The song not only called her special attention, but also Erwin's, Charlotte's and Keith's. Other people also looked, but that song had actually touched the mentioned people's hearts.

Alessa walked towards them and leaned on one side of the piano, looking at them with wet eyes. Was she crying? She remained as she was, moving her lips as she was following the lyric of the song they were playing. Charlotte and Erwin got close to them, walking one by the other. When the song ended, Alessa got close to them and hugged them both from the back. Levi smiled slightly and tenderly.

"Thank you." She whispered, crying. "Why did you play this song?"

"I thought that it'd be fair for your mother to be here today, so I thought that I could bring her back to life with the last song she sung for us." He whispered back. Those words made Eren realize that it was indeed the perfect moment to play the song. Alessa kissed both Levi and Eren's cheeks and hugged them again. "You're wonderful. I love you both."

"Amazing, indeed." Charlotte's nonchalant voice took place as she approached to them some more, followed by Erwin. "Did you know that people who have the ability to play a duet in piano need to be musically connected? Otherwise the music isn't fluid." Those words came as a surprise to Eren and, surprisingly, he found that she was indeed talking in a quite cheery. Erwin replied to her words and walked away with her after hugging his daughter and patting Levi's back.

So, that song ended up being Levi's wedding gift to Alessa, and Eren had been part of it without even knowing. Hours later, a lot of hours later, Eren was walking home with Levi. They were alone, though Alessa and Ronald were the first to go away on their honey moon and Erwin was in charge of the cleaning off the place, which meant that he would join them at home very late, even almost at the morning. The streets still were muddy. They were going up some stairs that led to another street nearer to the house when Levi spoke to Eren.

"Hey, brat, can I ask you for something?" He whispered, walking near the wall on his right and holding Eren's right hand.

"Of course. What is it?" Eren replied gently.

"Can you describe her? How was she dressed today?" He asked in a soft whisper.

"Well, she was wearing a white dress. I don't remember having seen her shoes, sorry. But she wore her hair in a bun and looked beautiful, and I think that she was wearing a necklace, but I didn't pay attention to that." He said, trying to remember as much as he could, but he actually hadn't looked more than her smile. "But I did notice the smile she had beautifully wide spread on her face."

"Thanks." Levi's whisper was notoriously nostalgic, and made Eren want to find a way to change that.

"I'm curious about something." Eren commented.

"Here you go again…" Levi sighed. "What do you want now?"

"Are you ticklish?"

"What kind of question is tha- hey!" He stopped talking and suddenly jumped to move away from him as he felt Eren's fingers running on his skin at his sides, continuing avoiding him as Eren still tried to reach him. "Hey! Stop! Stop I tell you!" He demanded while some little chuckles escaped his mouth, but Eren didn't stop, not until Levi tripped over with one of the steps of the stair, almost falling, but had time enough for Eren to catch him and to put a hand on the wall to stabilize himself.

However, putting his hand instinctively on the wall made him completely shiver, and Eren could notice that. In fact, every hair he had stood on end as he got his hand away from the wall. "E-Eren…" He stammered, breathless. "W-what is…?"

"I think you just smashed a snail…" The following Levi's face was priceless. His features contortioned in disgust, shivering again.

"Iiugghh… Gross!" He whined, moving his hand abruptly, trying to get the goo out of his hand. "Aagh, take it away!" Eren couldn't possibly avoid laughing, taking him from his arms to guide him back to the house. This man was really unique, and he himself was lucky to have enough patience for him. "Just hold on until we're home, and don't you dare cleaning that on my clothes, Levi."


End file.
